Stay: The Hardest Promise We Ever Ask a Person to Keep

Meet Brandy Vega — the mother, the emcee, the founder of Promise2Live — and the story of the promise she made in the worst moment of her life that has now reached over seven million people worldwide.

 Every movement that has ever changed the conversation started with one person deciding not to stay silent. Brandy is that person for this generation on this issue. Her story is the story of why this show is on a Tuesday, and why I am on a plane Thursday. 

In this episode, we cover...

Freedom of Speech: "Stay"

Full Story: "Stay: The Hardest Promise We Ever Ask a Person to Keep" 

From the Newsfeed: "The Line That Answered Twenty-Three Million Calls" 

Faith & Hope: "Bear Ye One Another's Burdens"

Father Time: "Almost Lost"

Funny Factory: "The Things We Say Instead of 'I Love You, and I'm Not Okay'"

Fitness Minute:"Blood Flow to the Brain" . Brought to you by Cardio Miracle.
🔔 Subscribe for new episodes every Thursday at 3pm MST

👉 A huge thank you to our sponsor, Cardio Miracle! The world’s best Nitric Oxide and Vitamin D3 supplement. Support your heart health and keep your promises to your body. Get yours here: https://cardiomiracle.com/ 

📖 Jason's book "The Promise to the One": https://www.amazon.com/Promise-One-Ja...

🌐 Website: https://jasonhewlett.com/

The Jason Hewlett Show — Where we use lots of F Words: Faith, Family, Fatherhood, Freedom, Fitness, Funny & Farce, as well as the Fulfillment of your Promises.

Part of the MiTL Live Network.
#TheJasonHewlettShow #KeepThePromise #Stay #SuicidePrevention #SuicidePreventionAwareness #988Lifeline #988Day  #WorldSuicidePreventionDay #Promise2Live #MentalHealthAwareness #MensMentalHealth #VeteranMentalHealth #PTSDawareness #EndTheStigma #YouAreNotAlone #OnePromiseCanSaveALife #CardioMiracle

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the show. I want you to look at the calendar with me for just a quick second. Today is Tuesday, September 8th. Yeah, that's 988 Day. Have you heard of that? It's the National Day of Action for the three-digit lifeline that has now answered more than 23 million calls, texts, and chats since it launched four years ago. And tomorrow, Wednesday, September 9th, I get on a plane to fly to Hollywood. And Thursday, September 10th, is World Suicide Prevention Day, a day the whole planet stops and lifts up the ones we've lost and the ones still here. So Thursday night, I'm in Hollywood at the Avalon Theater. I'm seeing the Promise to Live Global Livestream Gala, an event that will reach millions of people around the world. I hope you'll tune in. That's why the show today is on a Tuesday instead of Thursday, like usual, because Thursday I'm working the other side of this conversation. So today, my friends, today we are going to say the thing out loud. The thing we normally do not say out loud, the thing we don't want to talk about, or we change the subject about or scroll past when it shows up in our feed. Today we talk about a hard word suicide. We talk about the people we love who've thought about it, the people we love who've tragically been through it, and the promise we make, the hardest promise we ever ask a person to keep, the promise to stay. This will be an uplifting and positive show. Let's get into it. Coming up on the Jason Hewlett show, freedom of speech, stay, the one word promise underneath every other promise we've ever talked about on the show, and why the man who says, I'm fine the most is often the one you need to sit next to the longest. In full story, stay, the hardest promise we ever ask a person to keep. I'm going to tell you the story of Brandi Vega, a mother, a speaker, an MC, a friend of mine, and a movement called Promise to Live that began the night she almost lost her 14-year-old daughter. From the newsfeed, the line that answered 23 million calls. Yeah, it's the four-year report card on 988, the numbers on Veteran Suicide, the VA just released, and the one statistic that stopped me cold. In Faith and Hope, we'll talk about bear ye one another's burdens from Galatians 6.2, as well as Hannah in 1 Samuel 1, and why the gospel of the 988 Hotline is older than the phone. In Father Time, I'll be talking about a personal story of uh an experience that we've had in losing someone to suicide. And so we will talk about that gently and carefully. It's a it's a very important story in our family. With Funny Factory, how do you go from talking about all these hard things to this? Well, the we're going to talk about the things we say instead of I love you and I'm not okay. This will be a warm, honest bit about the coded language men have been using for a hundred years and what happens when we finally use the real words. And in the fitness minute, we'll talk about blood flow to the brain, the peer-reviewed science on nitric oxide, PTSD, and anxiety, and why Cardio Miracle is proud to be a sponsor of Promise to Live as well as this broadcast and podcast brought to you by Cardio Miracle. We thank them for that. So stay with me today, because this one truly matters. Labor Day is Monday. September 8th is the start of the last 122 days of the year. The job you have is not yours. You are entrusted with it. This is my portion. This one is for you. We build content around win. We build feeds around launch. We build gyms around push and pull. We build motivational culture around more. We do not, as a culture, build very much around the word stay. But stay is the word every crisis counselor in America uses. Stay is the word every chaplain, every therapist, and every 988 responder is trained to hold in their voice. Stay is the word a mother whispers to her 14-year-old daughter in the back of an ambulance, and stay is the word a friend prays into a text message they're not sure will be read. Stay is the promise underneath every other promise we've ever talked about in this show, because if you don't stay, you can't keep any of them. Now, here's the part I have to say directly, and I'm going to say it plainly because we don't have time to be clever today. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's most recent national fact sheet, suicide-related deaths are four times higher among men than women. Four times. Yeah, the men in your life are statistically the ones most at risk of not staying. And they're also statistically the ones least likely to say a single word about it before they go. And the man in your house who says, I'm fine the very most is often the one you need to sit next to the longest. So, as you know, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a doctor, I'm a husband, I'm a dad, a guy who makes his living on stage. I've watched what happens to the people in the audience, five people or five thousand, doesn't matter. When the conversation finally gets honest, the room exhales, the shoulders drop, somebody starts crying who did not know they're about to cry. This happens all the time. That's what happens when someone finally says the thing out loud that everyone needs to hear. So here is what I want to do today. On 988 Day, two days before the Promise to Live Gala, in the middle of National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, which is September, on a Tuesday, I moved the whole show to make room for this. I want to give you permission to have this conversation with your spouse, with your best friend, with the veteran across the street who waves and smiles and doesn't tell you what he saw, with your teenager who's quieter this week than the last, maybe with your dad, with yourself. The stigma is the whole problem. The silence is the whole problem. And the silence breaks the moment one person, I mean just one, decides to say the harder thing out loud. So stay is a promise you make. And it's also a promise the rest of us have to help carry. Because the person you can't make it alone in that moment needs somebody standing next to them who's already made it for them. That's the show today. And that's the whole show. So I want you to ask yourself, who's the person in your life who says I'm fine the most? And when did you last sit next to them long enough to find out if that's true? What do we build our culture around? And why is the word stay almost never on the list? I mean, if a promise costs you nothing, was it ever a promise? And what does the promise to stay cost the person who's kept it or who has to keep it alone? And who taught you it was not manly to say I'm not okay? And how much does that cost you? If today is the day you finally have the conversation you've been postponing, who's on the other end of it? The full story right after this. It's a mother in a hallway, in a moment nobody prepares you for. Her daughter had made an attempt and a friend called 911. The paramedics came, and in the space between the phone call and the hospital, Brandy did what a lot of mothers do and they have run out of every other option. She prayed. The prayer she told publicly on stages and in interviews ever since went something like this: God, if you save her, if you let me hold her again, I will do anything. And this part matters. Because Brandy carries a history that most of us in this room do not carry. According to what she's told me, she served in the military before any of this happened. Which means this amazing woman making that prayer in the hallway had already spent years around certain hard things, loss around service, around specific weight veterans and first responders know too well. Thankfully, her daughter lived. Brandy has kept that promise that she made in her prayer. She started something called Promise to Live. And yes, that's the number two in there. Promise to live, a proactive suicide prevention movement under the Good Deed Revolution 501c3. The premise is stunningly simple. One promise can save a life. You take the pledge, you commit to seeking help when you need it, to supporting others when they need it, and to ending the silence around mental health and suicide. That's it. That's the whole engine. When I was with Brandy on Friday, we went on a TV show here in Utah called Good Things Utah. And she handed me a coin and she looked at me and she said, Do you promise? Do you promise to stay? Do you promise to ask for help? Do you promise to understand that we love you, that you are loved and you are important? It was a profound experience to see her be so passionate and looking me right in the eyes and talking about that. You know, that little engine has moved. In 2021, Promise to Live hosted its first ever Gala on a live stream, and it was out of Salt Lake City. I was a part of it. It was amazing. Uh we've been trying to line up our schedules every year since, but uh even last year they took the whole show to Hollywood to the Avalon Theater. Yeah, this is the same room we'll we will be again this Thursday, September 10th on World Suicide Prevention Day. The Hollywood show reached over seven million people worldwide last time. Yeah, seven million people from a promise a mom made in a hallway. And this Thursday, I get to be the MC of the Promise to Live Gala. My job is absolutely simple. Hold the room, introduce the celebrities and influencers, introduce the heroes, introduce the first responders, point the audience in person and on the live stream at the resources that are already there, text 988, chat at 988lifeline.org, take the pledge at promis2ve.org, and for veterans specifically, dial 988 and press one, or go to veteranscrisisline.net. I'm telling you this story on the show today because it is the show. Everything we preach here, keep the promise, small promises, build big lives. A promise that costs nothing was never a promise. Brandi Vega is living it out in front of millions of people. Our tagline and her tagline are the same in two different accents. Keep the promise. One promise can save a life. As you know, I wrote the book on it, The Promise. If you haven't gotten it, there's lots of them left on Amazon. You know that joke. But I hope you'll check it out. You know, it means we owe her the same thing she's trying to give the world, the conversation out loud today. And so I hope that you'll keep track of those resources for yourself. Thursday, 5 p.m. Pacific. I hope you'll join us. The live stream goes live on YouTube.com at promise to live. Watch it with somebody. Watch it with your kid. Watch it with the veteran across the street. Watch it with the friend you've been meaning to call. That is the full story today. And it's a story that is still being written right now. By you, if you let it be. From the newsfeed, right after this. Story one from the newsfeed 988 has now handled more than 23 million contacts. How cool is that? It's incredible. According to a KFF policy analysis published July 14, 2026, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline has handled more than 23 million calls, texts, and chats since it launched in July of 2022. 23 million times someone in this country picked up a phone or opened a text or clicked a chat window and somebody answered on the other end. 23 million promises kept. That's incredible. Thank goodness for those people. Story two the volume is still growing. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported that in the six months before May 2026, 988 averaged 15,972 contacts per month, a 10% increase over the previous six months, and more than double the volume from 988's first year. So the line is not slowing down. The need is not slowing down, which is exactly why we need to talk about it today. And so I'm seeing over here as I'm reading through some of this news, we got Ralph saying, My apology, I forgot you're on a Tuesday today instead of a Thursday. Yeah, thank you for joining us. We've had to change the date just due to my travels. And actually, we're going to be doing essentially every show in September on Tuesday because I have an event on every Thursday this month. So we've changed it up. We'll be back on Thursdays live in October. So thanks for being here, Ralph, and everybody that's watching. Story three: the veteran number, the VA just released. In February of 2026, the Department of Veterans Affairs released its latest report on veteran suicide. In 2023, the most recent year of complete data, there were 6,398 veteran suicides. Man, that's slightly down from 6,442 the year before. A small piece of good news that it's less. But here's the number that stopped me. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for veterans under the age of 45. Second leading. For every man and woman who put on the uniform of this country came home and is under 45 years old right now. Suicide is the second most likely thing to end their life. That is not a policy problem. That is a promise problem. That is a nobody sat next to me long enough problem. So let's make sure to open our ears and our hearts when we when we see a veteran, when we see somebody that we know has served our country, they're at risk. Story four, men versus women. The AFSP 2026 national fact sheet reports that suicide-related deaths were four times higher among males compared to females in 2024. That's four times. Which means statistically, the audience of this show, which is mostly men, is the audience most at risk. So if you're watching this and you're a man over 30, please hear me out. You are not weak for feeling it. You're not weak for saying it. You're not weak for calling the number. The number's 988. It works from any phone in the US. It's free, it's confidential, it answered by real people 24 hours a day. For veterans down 988, press 1 or text 838-255. Save those on your phone right now. Because the promise you make today to have those numbers ready is a promise you make on behalf of someone you love. And you might know yet who that someone is. Faith and Hope, right after this. In faith and hope, I want to read one verse with you today, Galatians chapter two, or chapter six, verse two. In Galatians chapter six, verse two, in the King James Version, it says, Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. That's it. That's the whole verse. Bear ye one another's burdens. Not carry your own, not figure it out on your own, not pray it away privately and never tell a soul. Bear ye one another's. Yeah, that's the law of Christ in ten words. It's that we were built for this to be shared. I want to point you to another passage. We're gonna go from the New Testament to the Old Testament. 1 Samuel chapter 1. 1 Samuel chapter 1, a woman named Hannah is in the temple. She's desperate, she's broken, she's praying so hard, so silently moving her lips with no sound that the priest Eli sees her from a distance and assumes she must be drunk. That's how deep her grief was. It looked to a bystander like she lost her mind. She had not lost her mind, she was praying the prayer of a woman who had run out of essentially every other option. And when Eli finally listened, when he stopped assuming and actually sat with her, he blessed her. He said, Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition. Hannah left that temple different. Not because her circumstances changed, they hadn't changed yet. She left different because somebody had seen her. That is the gospel of the 988 hotline, 3,000 years before 988 existed. Somebody sees you, somebody hears you, somebody stays on the line. Here's the faith piece I want you to hold today. You are not meant to carry this alone. Not the anxiety, not the grief, not the memory, not the trauma from the tour you served or the tour your dad served and never talked about, not the loss of your friend or the sibling or coworker, not the whisper in your own head some nights. You are not meant to carry it alone. And the law of Christ, the actual instruction is that the rest of us are supposed to help carry it with you. So here's what I'd ask of you today. If you love God, if you follow Christ, if you are a person of faith of any kind or none, be Eli. Be the person who stops assuming and actually sits down. Be the priest who blesses the woman everyone else thinks is drunk. Be the friend on the other end of the phone. And if you're experiencing kind of your own personal Hannah situation today, if you're the one moving your lips with no sound, if you're the one whose prayer is coming out sideways, hear this. God has not left the temple. He's still here. The promise he makes to you over and over from Psalm 34 to Isaiah 41 to the cross itself is that he is near to the brokenhearted. You are not carrying this alone, not even now, not even today. Trust that enough to say the words out loud to another human being. Call the number, text the friend, take the pledge, show up Thursday night for the live stream. Whatever it takes to have the conversation. Faith is what you do at the pulpit, and faith is also what you do on the phone at 2 a.m. with somebody who called you because they had no one else. Bear ye one another's burdens. That's the whole law. Father time, right after this. Here, let's see. Okay, there it is. You know Romney, my my wonderful boy. Uh, you know him right now. If you've been following the show, here's a picture of him. He's a missionary. He just left to the Mexico training center, and he'll be there for a month before he goes to Guatemala for two years. We're missing him a lot. He left last Thursday. You know him as this confident, handsome dude. Here he is at the airport with all of us. This was an early morning last Thursday. If you're on the broadcast last week, you heard me break down crying about this guy. Well, I don't know, there may be more tears because I'm gonna tell you a little bit of a story about when uh we this was 2026, yeah? We're gonna go back to 2017. Now, Rney's right next to me on the very far right. He's the he's pretty small there. All of them have you know, they're all pretty small. You wanna see a picture of them now compared to that? Here's them today, essentially in the last year. They've all grown up. Romney's the one it seems to he's always on my left. He's on the right side of that picture. And then in 2017, there he is again, the little guy down there. So Royal's in front of me, he's the youngest. Ellen Redford on the side, and mommy in my arms. I'm gonna tell you about Romney at this time of his life. He was nine years old, and he was not doing well. And he wasn't eating, he wasn't uh he wasn't sleeping, he was riddled with challenges about uh just things in his mind that were being said to him, and he could not get past it very easily. As a dad, I was desperate to figure out a solution. We hired people, we took him to different doctors and so forth to try to figure out how we. Could help our little guy, but he was struggling. But he did get to go to a thing that we call NSA, it's the National Speakers Association. And uh here he is in the very bottom right-hand corner. If you can see him, he's smiling that big smile. Even though he was going through a lot emotionally at that time, I want you to understand that at that moment his life was about to be changed. One of the challenges of this is of this show is when I put this photo together, I forgot that we have that QR code. So I don't know if we can remove the QR code for just a moment while we show this photo. But there is a uh, oh, there you go. Thank you guys. You're awesome. That photo that was being covered up, that face in the in the white shirt on the far left, that is Johnny Stack sitting next to Manley Feinberg III. Those two boys were Romney's counselors. If you can see Ella is poking at her head through the middle of them back there. I don't know where Redford is, he's somewhere as well. But Johnny is who I want to talk to you about today. Because Johnny in the uh in the white shirt, handsome, confident, amazing. I did not know that while my son was going through his own internal trials and struggles, Johnny was also going through some stuff, like really hard stuff. In fact, in uh his state in Colorado, they had legalized uh marijuana and CBD with THC in it. And unfortunately, in a major unfortunate turn of events, Johnny, this handsome, wonderful boy, got um addicted to this drug. It the THC in that CBD was so great and horrific, it took over his mind. And he uh ended up having um having his life end by suicide. And uh it's hard for me to say that because he was such a good kid, he was such a blessing. Here's Johnny. If you go to Johnny's ambassadors, his mom put this together, Johnny Stack. He passed away way too young. He was an incredible young man, he made all the difference in Romney's life. And here's the thing: he was Romney's counselor and cheerleader and friend, and he helped him to see that Romney had some good in him and had greatness in him, and he was the kind of the first role model that Romney had that was a true role model outside of our family. I remember Johnny wrote this letter to Romney about a month after the conference together where they were in Orlando, and uh Romney was just elated, as you can see, he was so happy in this picture. This was when he started to come out of this dark place as a nine-year-old boy and has now turned into this boy who's now serving and speaking Spanish and going to serve the Lord and his people. I thought I would share today this story because I wrote Johnny's mother a letter, and this was from 2023, September 21st, so close to this date, 2023. I said, Laura, she's a dear friend because she's a speaker. I've known her for years. Her husband, John, as well. They're just amazing humans and Christ-like loving people, and and and and Laura's been one of the greatest keynote speakers in the world for years. And then she loses her sweet boy Johnny to uh to an episode, a psychotic episode that happened due to all the amount of THC in his brain. And so I wrote, Laura, I just got here to the Swan Hotel in Orlando. Overlooking the Dolphin Hotel where NSA Influenced 2017 was, I speak in the morning and I'm working on getting prepared, but I can't get Johnny out of my mind. It was this conference and event where our little Romney needed someone to save him. He was falling, not eating, drowning in some kind of tailspin as a nine-year-old whom we couldn't save as his parents. We lied about his age to allow him to attend the NSA with his older siblings. You're supposed to be ten. As that's all he wanted in life was to go to this conference. Since I was the leader that year, I snuck him in, so I was in charge of the youth event, and he lucked out to get Johnny and Manly as his leaders. I can hardly see as I type this. They sat with him, smiled, played with him, gave him their full attention. They were amazing, handsome, strong, powerful leaders who filled every room with light and love. How can I ever thank you and your family for the gift they gave us in serving and helping a boy whom we couldn't help? As parents, we were desperate. Putting their arms around Romney, Johnny and Manley saved our son. He's now grown up, a fifteen-year-old giant. He's 6'2, healthy, handsome, playing basketball and going to high school dances with pretty girls and eats like a horse. He smiles and makes movies and lives a very robust life. Does this happen without your son, Johnny? I don't know. I don't think so. Your son saved mine. All I remember about Johnny is light, joy, that smile, that hair, that exuberance and way about him. There was no one like him and never will be. He made such a difference to our family. Just wanted to let you know as I sit here looking out the window, crying, grateful and sad for those wonderful, precious memories and moments. And God we trust our Savior's grace that Johnny's watching over you and your family and the many whose lives he changed. I love you and your family. Give my best to your John. Johnny Stack, I hope that if you feel so compelled and moved that you might help with Johnny's Ambassadors. This is a worthy cause, a worthy charity. Johnny'sambassadors.org is the location where you can donate, and especially this month, when it hurts so much for these families that go through these hard things. I have a close friendship with Laura and John and her family. And this memory of Johnny Stack makes all the difference in our lives. Without him, without Johnny. I don't know if we have this moment with our Romney. I pray it doesn't ever happen to anyone as well. But let's remember Johnny Stack. Let's remember that we can do good. Let's remember that every person who has gone and who has left us, they leave a major, major hole in our lives. And equally we can fill ourselves up with joy knowing that we knew them. My friends, I didn't know how emotional I'd get on this show, but I'm honored to have known Johnny, and I'm so grateful for the power of Laura Stack putting together this incredible now solution of Johnny's ambassadors. I hope that you'll donate to it. And I hope that you know that she goes to schools everywhere to teach about the effects of THC and CBD and how it's so bad for a youth, for a child especially, messes with their brain and can create something very, very tragic in their lives. And so, how can we raise the light? We can share, we can talk, we can say, I will stay. And God bless Johnny Stack and his family. We're gonna jump into the funny factory somehow right after this. Okay, I'm still wiping the tears from my eyes. How on earth are we gonna do something funny now? I want you to know that if you look in uh today's comments, you can get all the links that I've said, if I've said them too long or too quickly. And I know today's show is a heavy one. I know some of you are wondering, how in the world do we get to the funny factory on an episode like this without cheapening any of it? So here's how we're gonna laugh at ourselves, at the men specifically, at the kind of sideways, ridiculous, coded language men have been using for a hundred years to say, I love you and I'm not okay, without ever using those actual words. Because here's the thing we already do this, we already check in on each other, we just do it in a secret men's dialect that nobody else on earth can decode, right? So number one, you got enough fuel? Yeah, that is not a question about your fuel tank. That is, I love you, bro. I want to make sure you get home tonight. Two men in a parking lot, neither one will ever say the real sentence. Both of them know what was just said. Number two, hey, text me when you land. Same sentence, different setting. This is the airport version, sometimes said to a grown man in his 40s by another grown man in his forties. Never once acknowledged his affection, but if you don't send the text, you will get a call in three hours. It starts with, hey man, you live? Which is also the sentence. Number three, hey, how's the truck running? Yeah, this is how are you? This has always been how are you? Sometimes the truck is the truck, sometimes the truck is the man's whole life. He'll tell you about the truck, you know. Listen to the way he tells you about the truck. That's the answer. Number four, the head nod, up or down, either way, from across the room. You know, an entire relationship, an entire I love you, brother, an entire I have not forgotten you, all packed into one downward tilt of the chin, or one head back like that from 12 feet away. Grown men have communicated more with a two-inch head nod than most people have communicated in a full paragraph. Number five, hey, I'll bring the drinks. He's not just bringing the drinks, he's coming over to your driveway, to your garage to sit next to you for two hours while you work on the mower. Neither one of you will talk about anything important. Both of you will feel better afterwards because sitting next to is a love language. Look it up. Actually, don't look it up. It's not in the book, but it should be. Number six, the Broncos look terrible on Sunday. Yeah, this is the I've been thinking about you. He's not been thinking about the Broncos, he's been thinking about you, but he can't open with that. He so he opens with the Broncos. Meet him where he is. Talk about the Broncos for six minutes, then say, hey, yeah, how are you actually doing? And watch what happens. Here's the punchline, and this is the whole show. All six of those are already promises. Every one of them is already an I love you, and I'm checking in on you. Men have been keeping this promise and code for generations. What if this week we just used the real words too? You can still bring the drinks, you can still ask about the truck, you can still send the text me when you land. Nobody has to hand the code book. But this week? This week specifically, on the week of 988 Day and World Suicide Prevention Day and the Promise to Live Gala. Maybe pair one of those with a sentence in plain English. Hey, I love you, brother. How are you? Are you okay? A few extra words. Might be the promise that saves a life. Fitness minute, right after this. Here's the part almost nobody talks about. The mind is a physical organ. It runs on blood, it runs on oxygen, it runs on a chemical messenger called nitric oxide, which is the molecule that tells your blood vessels, including the ones feeding your brain, to open up and deliver. When the nitric oxide is there, blood flows. When the blood flows, the brain gets what it needs to think clearly, to sleep well, to regulate fear, to steady the nervous system after stress. When nitric oxide is not there, all of that gets harder. And I'm not going to tell you that a supplement cures anything. That's I'm not allowed to say that. It doesn't. I mean, nothing I sell, nothing I take, nothing my family and my dad has spent the last 20 years formulating cures, anxiety or PTSD. We don't cure things. If somebody promises you that, you got to run the other way. But here's what the peer-reviewed science is saying, and I want to say it carefully. A 2024 review in molecular and cellular endocrinology summarized the growing evidence on the role of nitric oxide in hormone signaling in chronic stress, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, a 2023 review looked specifically at the nitric oxide pathway and the fear response in PTSD. And a foundational paper going back to 2005 established nitric oxide as an inflammatory mediator in PTSD. In fact, there's an article in Combat Stress magazine that highlights what nitric oxide does for the body. And the science is not a marketing slogan, it's a growing body of research that says the fear pathways in the brain and the nitric oxide pathways in the body are talking to each other constantly. Now, if you're not familiar with nitric oxide, a lot of people aren't. It's considered the miracle molecule. It's one of the three essential molecules we need in our body. And when we don't have it in there, and it dissipates as we age. Once we hit our 40s, it goes down. Once we hit our 60s, it's almost gone. We need to get it in there somehow. We need to get it into our bloodstream. Blood flow to the brain matters, especially for the men and women who've been through the hardest kind of stress, combat, service, first response, loss, especially the ones whose brains have been carrying more than any brain was designed to carry. And so that is why my dad, John Hewlett, started Cardio Miracle back a few years ago. It's been about 12 years. That's why I'm proud to tell you today that Cardio Miracle is the sponsor of the Promise to Live Gala this Thursday night in Hollywood. Why would we align with a suicide prevention event? Well, because we know that when you drink your cardiomerical, it goes inside of your body. The nitric oxide is ignited inside your body. There's no nitric oxide in this, but once it hits the bloodstream, when you drink it with some water, that's all you do. You just take a little bit of water and put some cardiomerical in there. It's a delicious drink. And what happens is it goes into the brain. It helps clear out the inflammation. It helps your body to have better blood flow. Think of all the things that happen that are good when you have great blood flow. So the world's best nitric oxide and vitamin D3 supplement is cardiomerical. And if you want to grab some, here's a QR code. And uh, or you can just go to cardiomiracle.com. It's also available on Amazon and other places, but it's designed to support blood flow, energy, and the everyday physical maintenance of the body that carries the mind, that carries the promise. So that there's also a link in the show notes if you want. And if you're on the fence, take my dad's promise to save one million lives as your signal that this family is not playing around. I hope that you'll choose to check it out. So let's bring this home. Today was the show we do not usually do. Today was the harder conversation. Today is the promise underneath every promise we've ever preached. Stay. If you take one thing from this episode, take this. Somebody in your life needs the check-in this week. You already know who it is. You do not need me to tell you, and that person is not going to raise their hand. That's the whole point. You're going to have to be the one who reaches first. So I invite you to text them, to call them, bring the drinks, ask about the truck. And then this week, especially, use the five extra words. I love you, brother. Are you okay? For crisis support, dial or text nine eight eight from any phone in the United States. Free confidential. 247 for Veterans Dial 988 and press 1 or text 838255. Or go to veterans crisis line dot net. Chat online at 988Lifeline.org. I hope you'll take the pledge at promistolive.org. Costs you nothing and it might cost it might uh it cost you nothing, it might cost you everything, you know? And so that's a real promise, and that's what a real promise does. Thursday night, September 10th, 5 p.m. Pacific, I hope you'll join us on YouTube at Promise to Live for the global live stream Gala from the Avalon Theater in Hollywood. I'll be your MC. Come s come sit with us online or in person. To Brandi Vega, who I'll be on the stage with at the Promise to Live event. I'm excited to hang out with her again. She's incredible. And every person on that stage Thursday night, every person watching from home who's ever thought about not staying, we see you. We're grateful you're here. Please stay. And to my dear friends, Laura and John Stack, I honor Johnny. A great young man. He helped our family so much. He made a difference. He still does through Johnny's ambassadors. I hope that if you'll consider to support Johnny's ambassadors, that would be an incredible blessing to so many people. They do so much good around the country, it's incredible. And they're bringing a message of importance to youth that don't think it's that important until they hear it. And then they also make their own promise and pledge. Promise to live, my friends. Stay. Thank you for joining us this Tuesday. We'll see you next Tuesday. Yeah, we're gonna keep doing a few Tuesdays in a row. Then we'll jump back into Thursdays in October. I'm Jason Hewlett. This has been the Jason Hewlett Show. I hope that you're willing to share this with your friends. Pass it along, comment, subscribe, all the different things. Appreciate very much that you would join me today. I'll see you next Tuesday, and until then, hope you will keep the promise. Have a good day.