Every 65 minutes, a veteran dies by suicide in America. This is Keep the Light On.
Hosted by Tammy Flake — Iraq War veteran, Heroes Haven peer counselor, and candidate for VFW National Commander in Chief — this is a podcast about the unseen wars. The ones fought inside, in silence, long after the uniform comes off.
Tammy has been to the edge herself. She knows what it feels like when the weight wins. And she knows what it feels like when someone shows up just in time. Each episode she brings the honesty most shows avoid: real stories, hard conversations, and the tools that actually save lives.
For veterans who won’t call a hotline. For military families who don’t know what to say. For anyone who loves someone they can’t reach.
If you only hear one thing today, hear this: you are worth being here.
Daniel Conely- Broken or Changed? Learning to See Yourself Differently
In this powerful conversation, Tammy Flake sits down with Army veteran Daniel Conely to talk about service, deployment, injuries, loss, identity, and the long road toward healing. Daniel shares his deeply personal journey through military service, physical injuries, divorce, depression, and a time when he questioned his own worth. He also talks about how veteran organizations, friendships, woodworking, education, and finding purpose helped him rebuild his life. This episode is a reminder that...
9 Sept 2026
Brooke Quinn- When AI becomes the only voice
In this deeply personal episode of Leave the Light On, Tammy Flake sits down with Brooke Quinn, a registered nurse and mother, who shares a story of unimaginable loss—and the strength it has taken to keep moving forward. Brooke experienced suicide loss first as a teenager when her best friend, died after struggling with bullying and mental health challenges. Years later, Brooke lost her husband, to suicide while she was pregnant with their daughter. But Brooke’s story raises another difficult...
2 Sept 2026
James Logan- Just Keep Tri- ING
When You Think It’s the End, It Might Be the Beginning What happens when the life you thought you were going to live suddenly changes? In this episode of Leave the Light On, Tammy Flake sits down with James “Jim” Logan, a 62-year-old Ironman athlete, author, husband, and cancer survivor living with a stage-four metastatic colorectal cancer diagnosis. Jim shares what happened when doctors told him he was dying—and how, after months of fear, anger, depression, and uncertainty, he made a decisio...
27 Aug 2026
Brandy Vega- Promise 2 Live
When Someone Says “How Are You?” — Ask Them How They Really Are In this powerful episode of Leave the Light On, Tammy Flake sits down with Utah media personality and suicide-prevention advocate Brandy Vega, founder of Promise to Live. Brandy shares a deeply personal story of surviving a suicide attempt at 12, serving in the military and working in news media, and ultimately facing the unimaginable when her own daughter attempted to take her life. What began as some of the darkest moments of h...
21 Aug 2026
Shame to Passion Projects
In this deeply personal episode of Leave the Light On, Tammy Flake opens up about a tool from Heroes Haven that changed the way she understands trauma, responsibility, and shame: the Responsibility Matrix. Tammy breaks down the difference between an accident, a choice, and something intentional—and the emotional response that belongs with each: grief, remorse, or guilt. Most importantly, she explains why shame is different from all three. Shame says “I am bad,” while guilt says “I did somethi...
14 Aug 2026
Numbers behind the crisis
In this episode of Leave the Light On, Tammy Flake takes an honest look at the statistics surrounding suicide, with a particular focus on veterans. Tammy breaks down the gender paradox of suicide, the role of lethal means, why firearms are such a significant factor among veterans, and the alarming gap between veterans who need support and those actually connected to care. She also discusses military sexual trauma as a distinct risk factor and shares why community involvement may be one of the...
1 Aug 2026
Time Saves Lives
Time Can Save a Life | Building Hope Before the Crisis What if the most powerful tool in suicide prevention isn't having the perfect words—but simply creating enough time for hope to return? In this deeply personal episode of Leave the Light On, Tammy Flake shares her own experience of reaching a breaking point and the plan that helped her find her way back. Drawing from her journey as an Iraq War veteran, peer support facilitator, and survivor, she explains why suicidal crises are often temp...
16 Jul 2026
The Family That Talks About Hard Things
What if the greatest gift you could give your children isn't money, success, or even security—but knowing without question that they matter? In this episode of Leave the Light On, Tammy Flake shares the intentional practices that have shaped her family through trauma, military life, and the challenges of raising children in today's world. From journaling and family councils to teaching financial responsibility, navigating social media, and having honest conversations about mental health, Tamm...
15 Jul 2026
Oxygen Tents and Scuba Gear: The Alternative Healing Map for Veterans
In this episode, Tammy Flake steps outside the familiar landscape of VA clinics and prescription pads to explore the wide, largely unknown world of alternative healing available to veterans and military families — much of it free, and almost all of it something she's personally experienced before recommending it. She starts with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, correcting the common image of a cramped medical chamber (it's closer to a comfortable inflatable tent) and explaining the research behind ...
15 Jul 2026
What Almost Killed Me Wasn't Combat
In this episode, Tammy Flake tells a story she's referenced before but never fully explained: what she means when she says the military almost killed her. It isn't about combat, and it isn't primarily about suicidal ideation, though she speaks to that honestly too. It's about nearly bleeding to death — twice, after two separate childbirths — inside a military medical system that dismissed her as a pregnant soldier before she ever walked through the clinic door. Tammy walks through what happen...
15 Jul 2026
The Books That Kept Me Here: Trauma, Meaning, and the Work No One Sees
In this episode, Tammy Flake steps away from interviews and campaign talk to share the private work — the books, the research, and the quiet commitments that underpin everything else she does. She starts with The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, and how it gave her language for something her own body had been trying to tell her for years through recurring shingles and sustained, suppressed stress. She follows it with Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and how his idea of me...
15 Jul 2026
From Script or From Scar: The Case for Peer-to-Peer Support
In this episode, Tammy Flake makes the case for what she believes is one of the most powerful tools in healing from trauma — not therapy, not medication, not a hotline, but another human being who has actually lived it. She unpacks the difference between peer-to-peer support and clinical or scripted care, and why people who are struggling most, especially veterans and first responders, can tell instantly when help is coming from a script versus from a scar. Tammy shares her own story of stayi...
15 Jul 2026
Tennis Shoes, Not Dress Uniform: Tammy Flake's Campaign to Reframe the VFW
In this episode, Tammy Flake steps away from the interview chair to make an announcement: she's running for National Commander-in-Chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. An Iraq War veteran, peer support facilitator, and suicide prevention advocate, Tammy lays out why she's putting her name forward, what the VFW actually does at the post level versus what most people — veterans included — assume it does, and why she believes the organization has drifted from the people who need it most. She sh...
15 Jul 2026
The Night I Stayed: Sloan's Story
This episode tells the story of Sloan — a Marine, a former military mortician who spent years receiving and preparing the bodies of fallen service members, and a man living with traumatic brain injury and PTSD after losing three brothers-in-arms to suicide. Tammy met Sloan through Heroes Haven, and this episode walks through the night his healing wasn't enough to hold — the crisis in the garage, the police who couldn't approach, his wife Nicole's decision to go back despite a protective order...
15 Jul 2026
The Room That Changed Me: Tammy Flake on What Suicide Reveals About Us
In this episode, Tammy Flake steps back from her usual format to share what happened inside a room in Golden, Colorado — a three-day gathering called Organizers in Dialogue that brought together roughly eighty people from opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum, with one shared agreement: they were there to listen, not to convince. Tammy walks through what unfolded over those three days, including a conversation about AI companionship tools and their risks for people in crisis, a...
15 Jul 2026
The Hardest Deployment: General Jeff Burton on Losing His Son and Finding His Voice
Major General Jeff Burton spent 37 years in an Army uniform — enlisting in 1982, commanding the 1457th Engineer Combat Battalion through the Iraq invasion, and later serving as Utah's Adjutant General over 7,500 soldiers and airmen. He brought all 450 of his soldiers home. But his hardest deployment happened in his own living room, when his teenage son died by suicide ten months before Burton left for Iraq. In this conversation, host Tammy Flake sits down with General Burton for a rare, ungua...
15 Jul 2026
Your Brain Is Not Broken: Tammy Flake on ACE Scores, Rewilding, and the Road to Hope
In this solo episode, host Tammy Flake opens up her own toolkit — the practices and perspectives that carried her from a dark place to a life she loves. She introduces the idea of the "paradigm shift," using her own journey from a wary teenage recruit to someone who now trusts the process, to explain how our sense of what's safe and possible can move more than we think. Tammy walks through the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) questionnaire, shares her own score, and explains why she believ...
9 Jun 2026
Leave the Light On with Tammy Flake - Pilot
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