Rising from the Ashes: Empowerment, Sobriety, and Veterans’ Justice with Lisa Van Slyke

Rachel Kugel: Hey there, I’m Rachel Kugel and this is Rachel Defends You. We are so lucky today to have as our guest, Lisa Van Slyke. She is the host of Rabbit Hole Reflections, an amazing podcast featuring raw stories of hope and healing. Sometimes the fire it takes to rise up.

I actually saw a clip of you eating fire. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that at some point. She practices what she preaches. And the cool thing about Lisa is that our interests are really aligned. As a criminal defense attorney, I’m all about making sure that people are more than their worst day.

And that they can rise up from their bad decisions or the bad decisions of others who they may have hitched their wagon to at some point. I know that Lisa shares similar values. She is a veteran. I thank her for her service and she is a speaker on women’s empowerment issues. I’m so excited to hear from her today.

I hope we get to hear about women’s empowerment in general but also specifically the reason I wanted to have her on this podcast with me was because she has a personal experience with veterans and the criminal justice system and DWIs. I’m hoping to get that story out of her as well. Lisa, thank you so much for sharing your time with us.

Lisa Van Slyke: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Rachel Kugel: What was the deal with the fire eating? I saw it on your social and I was like, that’s crazy. And also maybe I should be doing that.

Lisa Van Slyke: So I was at a speaker workshop. I’m a speaker by trade and I always try to find time to hone my craft. One of the guest speakers that’s his thing. He teaches people how to eat fire and I was selected from everyone in the audience to go up on that stage and eat fire, and it was so empowering. It really fit with what I do to help women find their voice, spark that inner pilot light again, to find that passion and drive forward in the most empowered way possible.

So it just aligned. It was so awesome.

Rachel Kugel: What does it feel like? Does it taste like anything?

Lisa Van Slyke: I tasted the lighter fluid. I think I was in such a trance that I didn’t realize what adrenal the fire was like in my mouth. But, you know, fire needs oxygen.

There wasn’t a lot of oxygen in that space. You hold your breath, you make sure you don’t breathe in, or you’re gonna inhale it and it’s just this huge disaster. He really worked me up to be empowered enough to make the choice to actually eat the fire. So it was surreal. And I looked back at the video and I was like, did I really do that?

And I did. I really did that. So it was the whole entire moment shaking from nerves and excitement and adrenaline. I was just like, let’s do this. I’m gonna eat this fire. It was so empowering. I suggest if you can find somebody to teach you, go and have it done.

Rachel Kugel: I’ve always wanted to do the Tony Robbins thing where you walk on the hot cold, end it, so it’s like a similar thing.

Maybe someday we’ll meet up somewhere and do that. Host something where people can do that.

Lisa Van Slyke: Sounds fun. Let’s do it.

Rachel Kugel: Can you speak a bit to where your work has taken you now? I wanna get into the story of the Veterans Court and your relationship. I know a little bit about it already and I want to share that with everyone.

But also I wanna know more about what you’re up to and what your work is becoming in time.

Lisa Van Slyke: I am the host of Rabbit Hole Reflections. We have dropped the ‘with Lisa’, but we keep that there just because I am the host. I firmly believe that people have a story to tell and when we tell our stories, we not only heal ourselves a little bit more, but we can heal others.

The importance of telling your story is to not stay stuck in that situation. That rabbit hole, that dark time that was really hard to climb out of. It’s to help empower others and when you can say things out loud and own your own truth, you can heal a lot more. And that’s why I do the Rabbit Hole Reflections with Lisa.

It’s my passion. I love speaking to people. I love hearing their stories. I am a storyteller, but more importantly, I’m a curator of stories. I like to collect those stories, and make sure that people. The spoken word is so important to the human species. It is really what sets us apart from other animals in the animal kingdom.

So for me, it’s preserving that and making sure that future generations in a thousand years, can look back and understand our perspective and the things we were going through.

Rachel Kugel: And really to that end, I deal with this sometimes with my clients too.

Some people they take a story, a lived experience, and it becomes who they are. And I don’t mean that in a positive way. They become victimized by it, or stuck in it. Like you said, stuck down the rabbit hole of either a bad decision they made or a trauma, maybe someone else did to them.

They either get into victimhood about it. And I think what you’re really kind of trying to do is transform that, turn that concept on its head and be like, yeah, you are your story to some extent, but let’s move it almost to push the energy outward instead of turning it inward.

Lisa Van Slyke: You don’t have to live there, you don’t have to live in it. You can unpack it and leave it at the door and go on. It can be challenging. And so the stories that I share with guests, I actually have people come on and share their story to offer hope and inspiration to people.

Rachel Kugel: And they leave nuggets of wisdom and information that listeners can find somebody they resonate with or something that they’re like, oh, I wanna go find out a little bit more about that. I think that can help me with my journey or, oh my gosh, I’m not alone because we’re not alone. Isn’t that the trick?It’s like you feel the worst when you’re self-involved. And when you can turn it outward and figure out how either something difficult you might have gone through or a bad decision you might have made. If you can use that to help someone else, it fixes it, it flips it all around.

Lisa Van Slyke: Yes. Makes you feel so much better.

Rachel Kugel: And it’s that whole thing of like, your message or whatever you know, the idea that there’s a reason you went through it and if one person is maybe helped from hearing about it, it kind of makes sense. And I think that’s, as humans, that’s what we’re looking to do, right?

Is to try to make sense of whatever the thing we do.

Lisa Van Slyke: And that’s why we’re here.

Rachel Kugel: Yeah. And so to that end, you have an experience that I wanted to bring you on to talk about because you are a veteran and I hope you’ll speak to that as well. Like,what was your service?

Lisa Van Slyke: I was in the army. I was a medic in the army and I served for about six years.

Rachel Kugel: Wow. Well thank you for your service. It’s so important now more than ever. I’m always looking to speak to people about their unique circumstances with the criminal justice system, with substance abuse, et cetera.

I specialize in criminal defense and DUI and telling those stories. We have things now that are becoming more prevalent like veterans court and different opportunities for veterans. We’re seeing people coming back with PTSD that’s causing substance abuse issues and I know you had a personal experience, not with yourself getting in trouble, but with another veteran.

Could you speak to that a bit?

Lisa Van Slyke: Absolutely. So a little background. I am five years sober. My sobriety date is two, uh, February 2nd, 2020. I started my sobriety right before the pandemic. I was very fortunate to have maintained my sobriety for that amount of time.

I’m gonna caveat that to say I was very fortunate that I never had personally, anything happened to me that was where I needed to be part of the legal system. My story is about my relationship with alcohol and my relationship with another alcoholic. He is actually the one who was arrested for a DWI and spent a night in jail.

We were raising our children together. We didn’t share a biological child. And just the whole process of watching that, and I am in at that time was in San Antonio, Texas. So our courts might be a little bit different here.

We’re very pro veteran here in Texas. The system here might be a little bit different than the veteran system elsewhere. He was a part of the veteran system and it was interesting to watch that whole entire punishment, I guess I’ll say unravel.

Rachel Kugel: Well, I think there’s different sides to it and I definitely wanna get your take on both sides.

So what the thought is, just so people that don’t know or haven’t been in that experience, that there is a movement, toward these sort of alternative resolutions for people with drugs and alcohol issues in general. And with veterans, let’s say in particular.

And some of the courts, like here in New York, we have some Veterans Court options. Some that range from helping people with getting into programs or legal help all the way to full court systems that only deal with veterans. Usually the judge is also a veteran if they can find one, and the pledge of allegiance is set at the beginning of the session.

There is clapping for these guys. This is almost like a treatment court with a specialized understanding of veterans. And I think the reason for that is a couple things like one, like you said, respecting, loving and taking care of our veterans, which is important. And two, the understanding that sometimes people that serve come back changed.

And we owe it to those people to have an understanding of that. I’ve seen clients with PTSD from serving overseas. Unfortunately I’ve seen female clients that were not treated, that were veterans, that were maybe not treated so well amongst a lot of men.

They have like a form of PTSD from that experience, you know, somesexual acting out and intention.I’ve seen people that choose the military. I mean, it’s wonderful when you choose it because you really love the country and it’s totally based on that.

There’s also people that choose it as a last resort ’cause things are not going so great. So it attracts sometimes a certain thing as well. That’s the reason for it. That’s kind of how they work. What was your experience in seeing the Veterans Court you guys saw in Texas, and what did you think was good or not good about what you saw?

Lisa Van Slyke: At the time, it wasn’t Veterans Court, it was not a veteran judge with veteran lawyers and just everybody in the room were veterans. I do know what you’re speaking of as far as that goes. That’s becoming more common here. This was not a veterans court, but it was a veterans program that was he was charged with the DUI or DWI. And like I said, he spent that night in jail. He got out on bond and when he went to court, his punishment was, now this was his first offense. Let me speak to something else that you had said, veterans, whether you went to war or not. The experience is unlike any other, and when you step into the civilian world, I’ve been out since 2010 and I still have a very difficult time trying to fit into corporate structure in the civilian world.

So it can be a very big change. It could be a very difficult undertaking for people to adapt to that. Then you compound that, like you said, there are a lot of women who experienced military sexual trauma. There’s a lot of people who experienced war and they have survivors guilt.

They watched their battle buddies die, or they’re questioning why they’re there in the first place. You add all of these things and then you come home to a world that doesn’t understand what you’ve been through, and it can lead to those substance problems. Alcohol is very common in the military.

Rachel Kugel: Well, that’s the other thing, the culture, right? It’s absolutely manliness and drinking and celebration or drowning sorrows, either way.

Lisa Van Slyke: Absolutely. And you jack these people up to be these warriors togo out and,it’s very testosterone driven .You’re doing everything that a male does. Go out and fight. And even the women get into that. And then we don’t have outlets, we don’t have coping mechanisms. It’s you go and you train to fight the enemy and then you go back to your room at the end of the day after you just pretended that you took out an entire base camp.

So the military has come a long way, but at the time there was no coping mechanisms. So what did you do? You know, you went to the bar with your battle buddy. You went to the strip club, you drank in the barracks. A lot of people isolated and became alone, and alcohol became that friend. It is the culture, the subculture of the military, particularly in the enlisted.

I’m not saying officers don’t have that because it is there as well. But for the enlisted, it’s a little bit different of a lifestyle as far as that goes. So the man that I was with, were no longer together. He was arrested for DWI spent the night in jail. Went to court and there was a veterans program through the court system in the state of Texas. His punishment was a breathalyzer in the car. And he didn’t have to carry it on his person. He didn’t have a bracelet that checked his blood alcohol level. It was just in the car. So anytime he had to start the car and he was behind the wheel, he had to blow in the breathalyzer every once in a while.

Rachel Kugel: He would have to do it while he was driving down the road. The rolling tests.

Lisa Van Slyke: Yes, exactly like that. ‘Cause that’s safe. But I mean, I get it. They don’t want you to drink. I understand, but it’s like, let me distract myself from driving to blow in this little breathalyzer thing.

So that was his only punishment and as long as he stayed clean. Then the arrest wasn’t dropped from his record. That was something he would have to go and later pay. But he was no longer charged for it. It was an arrest, not a charge, and there was nothing attached.

So, you know, as long as he stayed clean. But every time we got in the car, especially with our children. Watching him blow into this thing, it’s like, how do you talk about that with your kids? How do you own that? So it was a really interesting year and it didn’t stop him from drinking.

It didn’t stop either one of us from drinking. I continued to drink even after watching what he went through.

Rachel Kugel: Did he ever have any problems with the interlock? I mean, if you were still drinking because those are set generally to go off at anything over 0.02.

Lisa Van Slyke: So if he was drinking, I wouldn’t drink because I knew I would need to drive the car. If I was drinking, he wouldn’t drink because he knew he needed to drive the car. So what it turned into was a problem where we just didn’t leave the house. We were just drinking out in our garage in our little man cave.

Our little hangout spot and have parties at the house and have people come over to barbecues and whatnot. There were a couple of times where he had to go and be like, look, this thing is broken and they had to send him a new one or whatever.

But he did not ever drink behind the wheel after that. But it didn’t stop him from drinking.

Rachel Kugel: So if I could read between the lines here a little bit. It sounds like you’re feeling unsatisfied by the way the system handled the veterans. It felt more like they were putting ’em through something and spitting ’em out.

Maybe even as a family, putting you all through something and spitting it out as opposed to actually treating the underlying issue because yeah, they made it so that he had this thing in the car and he couldn’t be dangerous in the world. But it also sounds like you guys figured out how to game the system pretty quick and continue drinking and didn’t really stop the mindset that was going happen.

Lisa Van Slyke: It didn’t, because there was no 12 step program. There was no therapy that was required. There wasn’t anything. It was just don’t drink behind the wheel of the car and you’re good. There wasn’t any more accountability.

And like I said, it was something that we still did and continued to do. I just got sober in 2020, so it was something that we continued to do and it actually destroyed our relationship.

Rachel Kugel: And it also kind of in a way leaves the veterans sort of hanging. ‘Cause if we all sort of say, we accept we’re going light on him, we’re doing this veteran’s program ’cause we accept that being a veteran carries certain specialized dangers and issues and traumas at the same time, we’re then going, but you can,we’re gonna wash our hands.

We’re gonna just put a bandaid on that gunshot wound and not really address the underlying trauma issue. What do you think, if you were running it, what could it have done? As someone who advocates for families, veterans and women, what could this have been?

Because it’s an opportunity in a way. The other way to look at it is to say, this DWI, well bad, is also an opportunity because it’s a moment that the system is connected with the individual and the family.

If it was handled differently, it could have been a moment to have pulled everyone this family out of it, instead of what ultimately sounds like the family kind of dissolved in time, unfortunately.

Lisa Van Slyke: So we owe it to our veterans to do something more for them. And then there’s the other side of it but they can take accountability.

We can take accountability for ourselves. And there’s that fine line of what’s entitlement and what’s not entitlement. For a situation like this, it wouldn’t have cost anything to there prison system, you’re an attorney. There are AA programs in prison. Why not include that in a veteran’s court, you know?

Why not give the family a little bit more? Because the whole family went through it. It wasn’t just him that continuing of drinking and our kids would see us do this. Fortunately, none of them drink. So I don’t know how we were so lucky that they didn’t follow in our footsteps, but maybe they were just like, no, that’s not what we want for ourselves, you know?

But there’s ways other than just putting ’em through the Veterans Administration or the VA system, having them, you know, the doctors and the VA healthcare there, there’s other ways that we can give them the support that they need, and I just didn’t understand why there wasn’t more.

Rachel Kugel: Because I felt like civilians might be required to do a little bit more. So in a way, you felt like they were getting special treatment for being a veteran that didn’t actually serve them?

Lisa Van Slyke: Yes.

Rachel Kugel: Interesting. I wonder, so this isn’t really a question about veterans, but because you brought it up, I’m curious about the kids seeing the interlock and stuff, because this comes up a lot in everybody’s case.

You know where they’ve got, because interlocks are pervasive now, almost every case hasn’t it? That’s the business to start an interlock company because everybody ends up with an interlock no matter how minor. But I’m just wondering how did you guys deal with, talking to the kids about that?

Because it’s that moment where it could be used as a teaching thing if it’s done right.

Lisa Van Slyke: And you’re absolutely right. there were a couple of different conflicting ideas about how we should raise the children. He was a lot more conservative and old school about like, you don’t talk to the kids about the problems and whatnot.

And I was like, we need to tell ’em all the things because like you said, this can be a teaching experience for them. They had just watch him do it. There’s no getting around watching like what he’s doing. There was no hiding it. So they did know that he got in trouble. They didn’t know that it was because he was drinking behind the wheel.

But they did know that he got in trouble and it was a way for him to report to the court system that he wasn’t doing what he wasn’t supposed to do. Now, at that time, my oldest and his oldest were smart enough to understand what was happening. So there was a couple of sidebar conversations, but with the two youngest ones, it wasn’t as predominant of a conversation.

Rachel Kugel: It’s interesting ’cause I think a lot of people can learn from that. It’s a question I get all the time. What am I gonna tell the kids?

Lisa Van Slyke: The truth.

Rachel Kugel: I love that. So simple.

Lisa Van Slyke: Yes, it is. It’s healthy for them. It helps them grow up not thinking that they have to be perfect.

Rachel Kugel: Hundred percent. And then if they ever have a problem themselves, maybe they’ll feel like they can come to you. They know you’re not perfect. If they find themselves in that situation, you know? I wonder, I mean, again, I hope it’s not overstepping, but would you speak at all to your sobriety and what changed for you in 2020?

Like what’s worked? Because that’s another thing I get a lot I’m a big believer in AA, but I’m curious.

Lisa Van Slyke: And you know, and I am too, and I had a good circle of people around me, who held space for me and it was opening up conversation for me about some of the things I had gone through and why I did some of the things I was doing. I vividly remember.

I’ve been an on again off again drinker for years. The alcohol became my best friend, I want to say right around 2016. I was still in San Antonio at the time. I moved to Dallas in 2019 and I stopped drinking, and then all of a sudden I started drinking again. I know why I started drinking.

Okay, I will straight up be honest with you. For me, I couldn’t be who I thought that I was or who I thought other people wanted me to be without alcohol. There was a lot of underlying sexual stuff that went along with that as well. I started seeing a guy in 2019, closer to 2020, and I started drinking again because I didn’t know how to handle the relationship.

I was like, I don’t even know how to be somebody without alcohol. I’m still trying to figure out who I am. I had quit drinking for a little bit, and then I started up again. He was very patient. He held space for me. We had conversations. He knew I didn’t wanna do it.

I remember vividly pouring a shot saying, I don’t want to drink this. Why am I drinking it at the same time I’m drinking it. So I knew that I was coming to that point where I just didn’t wanna do it anymore. And I had enough. I said, this is not who I wanna be. This is not who I am.

The first three years were wildly intense because for so many years, alcohol was that source of letting me be who I am, and all of a sudden that’s no longer there. I was like, oh my gosh. Then I started feeling all of the feelings. I was like, I don’t know if I can do this like this. I don’t know if I can stay sober. What is this I am experiencing?

What are these feelings? And it was just having that support system, having people who had been there before me, who have journeyed years without drinking, knowing that resource was available to help me through it. That was community. It’s absolutely about community. Do not go alone. There are free groups out there.

There’s groups that will pick you up. They will take you to meeting. There are so many options. Don’t go alone. That’s really, I would have to say.

Rachel Kugel: That’s what I think really, like when I say AA works, I’m not even talking about any specific tenet of it. I think it works for that reason.

I think it works ’cause it creates a community for you of people that are in the same boat. And I think it also, and it this kind of, it’s a perfect place to end ’cause it goes right back to where we started, which is the other thing that AA does if you do it right and you make a community around it, it makes your mess, your message. Instead of being this shameful thing that the whole family hid and didn’t talk about, and you know, I’m trapped in this negative story about being an alcoholic or an addict or whatever. You end up in this place of your help. It’s turned outward and your story helps others and you start owning it.

And you start not being ashamed and in fact, being proud of the experience you’ve gone through and it becomes who you are. And kind of to bring it full circle, that’s also what your work is now about. Which is helping people to kind of do that, right?

I mean, to kind of transition from living in that place of victimhood, being victimized by their stories and instead using them to help people. For that, I thank you because I think you used your story to help people today. I hope they will go find you and listen to Rabbit Hole Reflections. I will link all your stuff in the show notes, et cetera.

Do you have anything super exciting coming up?

Lisa Van Slyke: I do. So it’s funny that you ask one thing I love AA as well. It gives people an opportunity to get up on stage and tell their story. And I am a firm believer in stories help people heal. So I actually have a workshop and a course to help people start their own podcast.

So taking my experience and helping you get there a little bit faster because it can be overwhelming. So getting your voice out there if a podcast is how you want to do that. Connect with me and let’s get you broadcasting.

Rachel Kugel: I love that. I’m gonna ask you also for the link and I’ll put that in as well.

Thank you so much. I can’t thank you enough for sharing your story and I know it’s gonna help people, so I appreciate it.

Lisa Van Slyke: Thank you so much for having me. I’ve enjoyed it.