Heart 2 Talk Podcast
Through an audio diary approach, I will share pages by having conversations amongst insightful people on health, wellness, beauty, spirituality, family and personal stories that inspire. Talks that come from the heart.
Heart 2 Talk Podcast
Sobriety, Resilience, and Endurance with Kelly Thrush
I am thrilled to introduce an incredible guest who embodies resilience and transformation—Kelly Thrush. Kelly is not only a dynamic public speaker and ultra marathon runner, but he’s also the cofounder of the Gratitude and Grace Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting families of transplant patients and individuals on their journey to recovery from substance abuse.
In this episode, Kelly will share his personal journey, highlighting how he harnesses his experiences to inspire others in overcoming adversity. We’ll dive into the power of failure as a springboard for growth, and discuss his passionate advocacy for mental health, addiction recovery, and organ donation.
Get ready to be inspired by Kelly’s story and the profound impact he’s making in the world.
Website and Upcoming Events:
https://gratitudeandgracefoundation.org/
Gratitude and Grace El Tour Team 2024- November 23
Hey guys. Welcome to Heart to Talk the podcast. I am the host and creator Theresa Cesare My intention for this podcast is to deliver to you wisdom, inspiration, and consciousness. Through solo episodes and conversations amongst insightful people. It is my greatest honor to bring to you talks that come from the. Welcome back to the show today. I am thrilled to introduce an incredible guest who embodies resilience and transformation. Kelly Thrush. Kelly is not only a dynamic public speaker and ultra marathon runner, but he's also the co founder of gratitude and grace foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting families of transplant patients and individuals on their journey to recovery in this episode, Kelly will share his personal journey, highlighting how he harnesses his experiences to inspire others in overcoming adversity. Get ready to be inspired by Kelly's story and the profound impact he's making in the world. Welcome to the show, my amazing friend.
Kelly Thrush:Oh, wonderful. Thank you for that intro.
Theresa Cesare:I am so excited for this conversation. And before we dive in I want to share with this audience how we know each other. It's kind of cool. You're
Kelly Thrush:fairly certain you were
Theresa Cesare:14 when I was a freshman. Were you a senior? When I was a freshman? I was a senior. Oh my gosh, that's right. So we went, we met in high school and I remind me, were you student body president?
Kelly Thrush:I was. Yeah. Sure was. Yeah.
Theresa Cesare:But fast forward, what happened in your life, like your story that led to what you're doing today to make this giant impact.
Kelly Thrush:Directly after high school, I went off and I played some college sports. I played college baseball for a couple of years. Not editarily myself. The teams I was on were good. Myself was not terribly at a high level. Really because I found that, partying and drinking beer Boy, I was good at those, and they were super, a lot more fun than working out on the field and sweating all day, so, My focus kind of got derailed pretty early, right into college. Then after college, things went well for a while. I was running restaurants. I, you know, got promoted early and quick and often through restaurants for a while, and ended up running, sports bars for quite some time, and in the culture of bars and restaurants, uh, specifically the ones I was in, booze was a big part of that. And so what ended up happening is what started as fun, drinking beer and partying with the fellas and all that good stuff and going out turned into a life crippling problem, and it accelerated and my alcoholism and addiction just increased. year by year until finally it was now causing havoc and chaos in every aspect of my life. So it was a, it was a long journey there for a while until my mid to late 30s, it was out of hand. I'd actually not drank for the entire year of 2006, well almost the entire year, but it was a year plus in 2016. I didn't drink because at that point my first wife basically given me an ultimatum. And said, hey, you need to clean it up or we're gone. And so I did, the very next day, cold turkey, just like that. and didn't go to meetings, didn't have any support group, didn't think I needed them. I didn't have a problem. All of the cliches that you'll hear from every addict ever. and then finally a year later it was, oh look, I'm cured. I can drink like a normal person. Look, I did it for an entire year plus a couple of weeks. There's no reason I can't drink like everybody else does. Well, so I went out and, tried. that very first day, other than lying to everybody by not saying that I was going out drinking, I did fine. I had two drinks and just like normal. That was great. The problem was is that my addiction came back with a vengeance and within three weeks it was as bad if not worse than it was when I quit the first time around. and that sent me spiraling and that was, the beginning of Ended 2016 into 2017. as a result, my, my marriage dissolved. my relationships dissolved with my kids, with my siblings. it was, it was tough there for a while. I was actually, the phrase I use is I was darn near homeless at that particular point. my grandmother who had lived with us because of health concerns, she lived with us and the teenagers. she still had her original house. Thank goodness. Cause I was able, she allowed me to move in there with her. Otherwise, I don't know, I don't really know what I would have done. And
Theresa Cesare:so how did you get out of it?
Kelly Thrush:What ended up happening was during that year of 2017, once I left the house and I was on my own and I had no. Real responsibilities. I was at this point, I went from a general manager and a training manager that traveled, you know, different locations, for restaurants to now I'm a server at 38 years old, 37, whatever I was at the time, living with my grandmother and, I wouldn't say in squalor, but, It was a step above that. But finally in January of 2018, my liver finally quit. and I was finally forced to by my boss, my current boss actually, who still I work for to this day, eight years, seven years later almost, send me to the hospital as an ultimatum. Um, Um, because I was in denial, and she could see it, and so could everyone else around me, that I was jaundice, my eyes were yellow, my skin was yellow, I was sweaty, I was a mess, I was death warmed over, and she looked at me and said, you're going to the hospital right now, and didn't give me a choice, and thank goodness, and that was on January 10th of 2018, because I was in, end stage liver failure. I was at stage four end stage liver failure from cirrhosis and from the scar tissue and from the drinking. and I spent in total about four and a half months in the hospital at that point. So when you asked about rock bottom and quitting drinking, none of that was by choice. It was simply because I was in the hospital.
Theresa Cesare:It was like what nearly killed you is what like had to save you. There probably was nothing else, right? Like, to, like, get you to snap out of it. No.
Kelly Thrush:Any, so, when I do, I do, a lot of talks, and especially if I'm talking to young people. I always talk about Marvel movies, right? And I don't remember which one it was, Endgame or whatever it was. But one of those ones where, Doctor Strange and Iron Man are talking. And they talk about all these different scenarios and how this plays out. And he basically tells him, look, there's only one scenario in which the good guys win. And that was me. This was the, the one timeline in which I actually made it out alive, out of that situation. Had I not met, Jamie, who is now my wife, she was then my girlfriend. Had I not met her at that particular moment in my life, I wouldn't have made it. Had I not been forced to go to that hospital that day, I wouldn't have made it. There's a number of things that had to play out, even when I was in the hospital, had to play out in order for me to survive, because there were multiple doctors. We did the tours of the hospital around town, and we went to four different ones, uh, and saw, you know, a liver specialist, and each of them, until I got to the one that did the transplant, each of them said that there was nothing that they could do for me, that I was beyond repair, it was time to get my affairs in order. I had about two months, give or take,
Theresa Cesare:Wow. So then what happened next?
Kelly Thrush:So, we do the tour of the hospitals and finally we end up, at banner UMC down here, on campus. And even there, the, the initial doctors that came to see me, this was now mid-February, give or take, and I've now been in hospitals for five weeks or so. I got there and even the doctors at Banner told me. That there was nothing they could do for me. because my liver was so far gone, it was now dragging my kidneys down with it. So they were failing on top of it. And there were two doctors, internal hospitalists, medicine doctors, that I, to this day, don't know what they saw in me. Or what convinced them, but they convinced the transplant team to take a risk on me. I had goosebumps. So, and yeah, it was, it was pretty amazing. And so they were able to convince the transplant team that yes, this, this guy is worth the risk of. all the things that could have or maybe should have gone wrong. And so finally, on beginning of March of that year, I got approved for the transplant list. And then there were all sorts of red tape and hoops that you have to do with insurance and so forth. And then, um, on March 22nd, I actually had a full liver transplant that day.
Theresa Cesare:Oh my goodness. And you're doing well with it. Your body received it. Oh my God.
Kelly Thrush:Oh yeah. I am, I am healthier now than I ever have been. including those high school days when we knew each other. life is so much sweeter. I mean, you can imagine when you physically touch your own mortality, your perspective changes, at least mine did. Right. It's amazing how that changed everything around me. The, the first part it really happened almost immediately was waking up from that surgery. The surgery took something like 14 hours, something along those lines. And then I wasn't awake or at least conscious for the next. Sometime after that, and I woke up in the ICU with the ventilator sticking out of my throat and all these tubes hooked up to me and every machine that you can think of, Jamie's on one hand holding one, and my sister, Yes, yes, I remember. Blew in from Colorado, was holding my other hand, and then family members who hadn't been around when the chaos of addiction was going on, because they couldn't be, were now in my hospital room with me, uh, and it was amazing. And I was. I was just overwhelmed with gratitude. I mean, it changed my life that those 10 seconds waking up were
Theresa Cesare:life changing. Oh my God, what? Miracle upon miracle that just grew.
Kelly Thrush:That recovery was tough. Not only the physical recovery, because when I got out of the hospital, I couldn't walk. Any distance anyway, if it was any sort of distance, I had to have a wheelchair, if it was short, maybe I used a walker, I had to learn how to do all of those things again and build up my muscles. I was down to, uh, about 150 pounds. Which, for my frame, is nothing. It's skin and bones. Uh, and yeah, if I fell, I had no muscles to get back up. So, that was a long process. And then the process of actually becoming sober and thriving was a very long process. Because the 15 years or 17 years leading up to that, I mean, there was very, very few days I went without drinking at all. And so now, all of a sudden, here I am with this brand new gift. That in my mind, I didn't deserve. Somebody else or other people deserve that way more than I did. and I have no emotional tools. Or, um, self awareness on how to cope with all of those things, right? Because before, it was always just, I just boozed it up. That's how I dealt with anything and everything. Celebrations, bad things, it didn't matter.
Theresa Cesare:And so tell everybody what you're doing now as a result of your journey.
Kelly Thrush:And during that journey and that process as I'm going through smart recovery, uh, which is how I came up through the sober ranks, so to speak, and as I found fitness. I knew I had to give back. I had to. It was, it was something I had to take this gift that I have been given and make sure that I earn it every single day because it's something that it was given to me by, by somebody who, who granted me the gift of life. Right? And so I need to somehow give that back to the community, to other people that might be struggling. So Jamie and I started a foundation called the Gratitude and Grace Foundation. we, uh, provide community and financial support for transplant patients and their families as they're going through these, that journey of their own. Because with transplants, the patient itself is typically out of work for a year or so, but the bills are still there. The mortgage still needs to be paid, the electric bill needs to get paid, and Jamie and I really suffered through that, and I'll say Jamie really suffered through that. She had the hard part. I just. tried to get healthy again, she had to worry about the electric bill or the water bill or the car payments or whatever it was that we had to worry about. Um, to the point where she was actually, as I was recovering, I would recover Monday through Friday at my grandmother's house. And my mom and my grandma would be there cause you have to have 24 hour care. And then that would allow her to work. And then I would come home on the weekends. Well, what I didn't know until a couple of years later is that she would turn off the water Monday through Friday. Okay. Take a shower at grandma's house and then she could go to work. And then we'd come back on the weekends. Everything's back up. And so we started this foundation to help people in those types of situations, where if somebody does have an issue with the electric bill or rent or whatever, we can be there to provide at least, at least alleviate some of that stress and some of that problem. Uh, and so that's how the whole thing got started. That's
Theresa Cesare:so inspiring. And so you have an annual event or many events in how you fundraise. Yeah. Tell us about that.
Kelly Thrush:Oh, yeah. There's all sorts of events. There's good ones. So we'll talk about the big ones. So on Saturday the 28th, we're having our Gratitude and Grace Gala. And it is a fundraising dinner. We're holding, posting it out at Westin La Paloma, who's now one of our sponsors. Hillary Phelps is our keynote speaker. she is very big in the recovery community. She has her own podcast. She's an author. and so we flew her out. Hopefully she's in the air right now. Her flight's been delayed. Oh no,
Theresa Cesare:fingers crossed.
Kelly Thrush:No, fingers crossed. She's supposed to land here in a couple hours. Um, she's going to be our keynote. And so we're going to, we sold tickets and we're raising money there. We're going to have. raffle items and all other ways to donate that way. The next one coming up is we have a team for El Tour de Tucson because part of my crazy ultra endurance races is I'll go ride this 100 miles with El Tour. Uh, and this year Gratitude and Grace has a team. So we have 10 riders currently. So if there's anybody listening, you'd like to cycle? Shoot, even if you don't like to cycle, we'll get you on the website and you can sign up with the team because it's pretty fantastic. And then the flagship event is called the Tumamoc 10 that happens every March. and this one is, near and dear to me. so about four or five years ago now, um, uh, I was going to celebrate what we call in my house my liverversary. And my buddy, another one that you actually know from high school, Tom Cox, Yeah. Yeah, so, he was a buddy of mine and he says, Hey, how are you, this was like four years ago, he goes, How are you celebrating your, your Libraversary this year? I said, well, I think I'm gonna go run up and down Tumamoc. And he goes, hell, that's a great idea, man, I'll come with ya. and I said, yeah, I think I'm gonna do it ten times for a total of fifty kilometers. And he goes, what are you, stupid? I'm not doing that with you. That's, that's ridiculous. And so, he didn't do it all ten. But what I did do that first year was sucker enough people to come with me that I had someone to go with me every single trip. Every ten times for that whole day. and that has now flourished into an event we call the Tumamoc Ten. And so this next year, it's gonna be on March 8th. And we are going to, every hour on the hour, starting at 7am all the way through 4pm. People, we all go up the hill as a group. Now. For those of you that are listening, you don't have to do it all ten times. There's a few people that are crazy enough to try that and go for it. One
Theresa Cesare:time nearly kills me and I think I'm pretty like fit.
Kelly Thrush:Well, in that case, since you know you can go once, you have to go twice. Oh, I love that. And it can take you as long as you want. I love that. As much time as you want. And we'll have snacks and music and sponsors. And we're gonna have bibs this year so that we stand out on the hill. We have t shirts. I mean, it's a whole, it's a whole to do. Uh, and so this year we have sponsors. We're partnered with the U of A for this event on Chumaloc. So we are officially sanctioned. So to speak, uh, it's going to be fantastic and it's going to be another fundraiser for the community. Um, so that we can get out and help some more families. Gosh,
Theresa Cesare:this is so inspiring and I'm so proud of you. And so for those listening, including myself, I'm going to drop every link for, of course, your website, upcoming events. Is there a way to give to, you know, to donate to Gratitude and Grace? That's going to contribute if you can't make an event or if you're going to miss it. How can we
Kelly Thrush:yeah, absolutely. Yeah, right on the website. I mean, there's a big donate now button right there you can also donate to other events like for example, tumamoc 10 or or l2 or either or you can go to those links on the The actual website and you can donate to a team or you can just donate to the foundation itself we're a 501 c3. Everything is taxed write offs tax deductible so especially when it comes around towards the end of the year and people like oh my gosh I haven't spent my tax money to write off You I, I got a great foundation that, can always use an extra hand.
Theresa Cesare:That's incredible. Wow. Before we wrap up, is there any tips
Kelly Thrush:yeah, especially if you are struggling. a lot of times it's those irrational thoughts that we have in our own heads, that voice in your head. That you typically, at least in my case, is not terribly nice. It doesn't say nice things to me most of the time. and every single time I have talked to it, it's usually full of B. S. I almost cursed. Uh, and so, if you're struggling and you're, and you really are wanting to be sober, but it's hard, it's difficult, just remember that This will pass. That craving will pass. The phrase I like to use is ride that wave and when you get that urge and I just I gotta have a drink or I gotta use. I promise this if you ride that out long enough It'll dissipate and it'll go away. One of my favorites when I'm dealing with folks that are new to sobriety is like I need to have a drink. Well, okay, let's back that up. The only thing you need to do today is breathe. Everything else you can do tomorrow.
Theresa Cesare:I love that.
Kelly Thrush:So that'd be my biggest, my biggest piece of advice is just Stick it out. It'll pass. None of this is permanent.
Theresa Cesare:Thank you so much, Kelly. All right, we're gonna now pivot to the ending questions. And so the first one, what is your favorite book?
Kelly Thrush:Oh, see, I, you told me that. Do you have a few? Yeah. So I got like a list. Okay, give
Theresa Cesare:us your list. Hey, there are no like minimum, like, yeah, give us, yeah. Fair enough.
Kelly Thrush:So I am currently in a series, it's called the Last Kingdom series or, or the Saxon Tales or something. It's historical fiction and it's about England. And there's, you know, Viking warriors and so forth, and so that's what I'm doing currently that I'm reading, that I thoroughly enjoy. The book that started this whole thing, is called Running Man, and it's by Charlie Angle. and he is an ultra runner, an adventurist, and also very big in the addiction community as well. And so he started this whole thing when, I read that book in probably 24 hours. Well, while my wife was sick and I was holding her hair back in the bathroom, she looked, yeah, it was like three in the morning. She goes, Oh honey, you can go to bed. You don't need to stay with me. I'm like, no, I'm good. I'm in the middle of this book. It doesn't bother me. Um, but yeah, so charlie angle, the running man had a huge impact on me. So those are probably the first two, the comfort crisis by michael easter is another really, really good one that I like.
Theresa Cesare:Thank you for those. And then the next question, what is your favorite affirmation or mantra that keeps you motivated?
Kelly Thrush:The motivated is why not? Yeah. Ooh, why not? People will say, yeah. People will say like, you're going to run a hundred miles. Yeah. Why not? I love that. Let's go for it. Why not? If, if, if you can do whatever it is that you want to do. Yeah. Why not? If you fail, who cares? Like, we get this amount of time on this planet. I mean, it is, it is, it, it flashes in front of you. So go do the things that scare you a little bit. Go do the things that you're not sure you can do. Um, I have a 300 mile trek coming up in April that I'm not real sure I can complete that. But you know what? I'm going for it. Why not? If I, if I make it 150 miles So shoot, if I only make it 50, only, only make it 50 miles, you know, I made it 50 miles that day. Like that's, it's amazing. So yeah, why not go, go camping, go trekking, go skydive, go do whatever you want to do. Go have experiences that you will not be able to get possibly tomorrow.
Theresa Cesare:I love that so much. And the last question, what do you want to be known for?
Kelly Thrush:I want to be a person that people around me can count on. No matter what they need, it could be obviously the foundation in helping complete strangers navigate those, trials and tribulations in their life. But shoot, if you need help moving the couch, I got a truck. Sure. Let's go do it. So I want to be someone that you can call and know that, yeah, I'm there. And we don't even have to be good friends, too. We could be complete strangers and you just need a hand. And yeah, I'm on it. I got it for you.
Theresa Cesare:Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Please download, rate, subscribe, and share this podcast. Also, be sure to visit my theresacesare.com to check out my inspirational merch, connect to my social accounts, and much more may you continue to be filled with wisdom, inspiration, and consciousness. Otherwise, friends, I will be back in two weeks for another episode of Heart to.