Tethered

James Dickerson, Andy Jenkins
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

The things we're tied to really matter. Sometimes "success" and healing is a matter of being lassoed to the right people, the right places... and even the right dog.

  1. 19h ago

    13 | What We Hand Our Children to Carry (Generational Issues, 2 of 2)

    His health didn’t collapse all at once. It drifted. Weight gain. Diabetes. Smoking. Alcohol. Injuries. Prescriptions. One thing stacked on another until, at one point, James weighed more than 400 pounds and landed in the hospital with blood sugar over 500. ⚠️   In this episode of Tethered, James talks about the physical side of accumulated trauma—and how neglecting your body can sometimes be connected to something much deeper: Not caring whether you live. 🧐 Then comes another wake-up call. After years of pain medication following military injuries, James says he reached a point where he needed pills just to feel normal. But then his daughter Ashley asked him to attend a daddy-daughter dance. He was out of pills. So he bought some on the street just to make it through the evening. That was the moment something changed. 👇   But Ashley’s story reveals something else too. Trauma doesn’t stay neatly contained inside one person. Families carry it. Spouses carry it. Children can carry the effects of environments they never chose. ⭐️ This episode is about health, addiction, family, responsibility, and choosing what happens next. You can’t rewrite the past. But you can start stewarding what’s still within your control—and choose a healthier path forward.   _______________ 📕 Join the book launch team for James’ upcoming book = www.GY6.online/james ⭐️ James’ website = www.JamesForVets.com  📓 Grab Andy’s book (or audiobook) “Soul & Spirit | Health + Healing” = www.GY6.online/SSHH  🎙️GY6 live events = www.GY6.online/events

    13 | What We Hand Our Children to Carry (Generational Issues, 2 of 2)

  2. Oct 5

    12 | Blessings or Curses? (Generational Issues 1 of 2)

    He barely knew his biological father growing up. To him, the one the family called “Big Jim” was mostly a stranger. Then came one Christmas visit that James carried with him for decades— along with one worn-out orange bicycle he refused to ride but never threw away. 🚲 In this episode, James talks about fathers, sons, fractured families, and the strange ways resentment can become part of our identity. He also tells how, later in life, he and his dad finally became close. Really close. ❤️‍🩹 Then Big Jim went to prison. The charges were false, the plea deal went sideways, and the truth surfaced only after the sentence had already begun. 👇 Ironically, those prison years became part of what finally brought father and son together. James visited regularly, and the relationship that never fully formed in childhood began to take shape between two grown men. ⭐️ This episode is about, well… the stuff that keeps going forward through family lines… Patterns. Pain. Behavior. Legacy. Because families pass things down—good and bad. And at some point, every generation gets a choice: Repeat the pattern… … or become the place where it stops.   _______________ 📕 Join the book launch team for James’ upcoming book = www.GY6.online/james ⭐️ James’ website = www.JamesForVets.com  📓 Grab Andy’s book (or audiobook) “Soul & Spirit | Health + Healing” = www.GY6.online/SSHH  🎙️GY6 live events = www.GY6.online/events

    12 | Blessings or Curses? (Generational Issues 1 of 2)

  3. Sep 28

    11 | The Man Who Chose Us (Grandpa Lloyd)

    Let’s meet the most influential man in James’ life— according to James himself… 👇 At 14 years old, Lloyd stole his older brother’s birth certificate from a San Antonio orphanage… …and joined the military. By 16, he was a prisoner of war in Korea. ⭐️ James met him when he was Grandpa Lloyd. But long before that, he was a teenage soldier. A POW. A man who came home blind, in a wheelchair, and carrying injuries that would affect him for the rest of his life. 💜 But this isn’t only a war story. ❤️‍🩹 It’s also a love story. Lloyd came home believing the girl who helped him survive captivity was still waiting for him. She wasn’t. Marianne was pregnant by another man who had disappeared. Lloyd’s response? He loved her anyway. He married her, raised her daughter as his own, and kept the truth private for decades. 🤫 Years later, one family secret finally surfaced—and revealed just how differently life might have turned out. This episode is about resilience, family, legacy, and a kind of love that chooses to stay. Because inheritance is what you physically leave behind— houses, cars, money, and other “stuff.” Legacy is what keeps living through the people you loved… … and the ripple effect that compounds in awesome ways.     _______________ 📕 Join the book launch team for James’ upcoming book = www.GY6.online/james ⭐️ James’ website = www.JamesForVets.com  📓 Grab Andy’s book (or audiobook) “Soul & Spirit | Health + Healing” = www.GY6.online/SSHH  🎙️GY6 live events = www.GY6.online/events

    11 | The Man Who Chose Us (Grandpa Lloyd)

  4. Sep 21

    10 | Trained to Go to War, but Never Trained to Come Home

    James Dickerson came from a long line of warriors. But growing up, he mostly heard the funny stories. The cold. The food. The strange things soldiers do. Not the horrors.  That changed when James went to Bosnia. In this episode of Tethered, he talks about what happens when the stories veterans carry are too heavy to casually hand to the people they love—and why some experiences demand the right time, place, and purpose before they’re shared. 🇺🇸 James takes us back to the Sava River, the devastation of Bosnia, and the realities of a war zone that had once hosted the Olympics. Along the way, we also meet Irina— his East German wife— whose own childhood behind the Iron Curtain carried trauma James didn’t fully understand at the time. 👇 And then the story comes home. Because surviving war is one thing. But re-entering family life is another. James describes coming home physically hurt, mentally exhausted, disconnected, and lacking the tools to be the husband and father he wanted to be. ⭐️ This episode is about war, family, identity, and reintegration. Because sometimes people are trained exceptionally well to go… …and almost not at all to come back.     ___________________   📕 Join the book launch team for James’ upcoming book = www.GY6.online/james ⭐️ James’ website = www.JamesForVets.com  📓 Grab Andy’s book (or audiobook) “Soul & Spirit | Health + Healing” = www.GY6.online/SSHH  📳 The Adverse Childhood Experiences Assessment = www.GY6.online/ACE  🎙️GY6 live events = www.GY6.online/events

    10 | Trained to Go to War, but Never Trained to Come Home

  5. Sep 14

    9 | Built from Broken Pieces

    James Dickerson had already been through chaos, rehab, crime, drugs, and more than his share of instability before he ever put on a uniform. Then the two Kathies gave him a choice: 1️⃣ Leave the house OR— 2️⃣ Go to Job Corps, get his GED, learn a trade, and get himself into the military. He chose the Army. 🪖 Strangely enough, basic training felt almost comfortable. The yelling. The structure. The pressure. The schedules. James had spent much of his life learning how to function inside chaos, so while others struggled, he thrived. 💥 But there was a problem: The Army gave direction to a man who was already carrying years of unresolved trauma WITHOUT ever addressing the unresolved trauma… 👇 Eventually James deployed to Bosnia, injured but unwilling to leave his team behind. And what he witnessed there introduced another kind of wound. Not simply fear. Not simply PTSD. But moral injury—the guilt, shame, and internal conflict that can come when the things you witness, do, or cannot prevent collide with your deepest beliefs about right and wrong. ⭐️ This episode explores the difference between wounds of the soul and wounds of the spirit. Because you cannot heal the right problem by treating the wrong wound.   ___________________ 📓 Grab Andy’s book (or audiobook) “Soul & Spirit | Health + Healing” = www.GY6.online/SSHH 📕 Join the book launch team for James’ upcoming book = www.GY6.online/james ⭐️ James’ website = www.JamesForVets.com  📳 The Adverse Childhood Experiences Assessment = www.GY6.online/ACE 📺 The short video describing the difference between PTSD and Moral Injury = www.GY6.online/blog/which  🎙️GY6 live events = www.GY6.online/events

    9 | Built from Broken Pieces

  6. Sep 7

    8 | Wherever You Go, There You Are (The Two Kathies, part 1)

    A year-long “rehab tour” provided James with something he didn’t have when he left: An education in drugs, manipulation, and how the wrong crowd operates. And before long, he put some of it to use. In this episode of Tethered, James continues the story of The Two Kathies— his mother, Kathy, and the woman who became an important part of their family. 👇 By high school, James says and a group of friends had built what amounted to a teenage crime syndicate: burglaries, stolen vehicles, guns, a fence to move stolen property, and enough money to make them feel untouchable. The Two Kathies eventually realized something had to change. So they moved him out of San Antonio. But there was one problem: You can change locations without changing what’s happening inside you. ⭐️ Dallas brought a new school, a job in a rough pawn shop, different people… …and eventually the very drug use James had been falsely labeled for years earlier.  This episode is about environment, influence, labels, and the things that slowly become “normal.” Because when chaos is the water you’ve always lived in, sometimes you don’t recognize it as chaos at all. And healing begins when you finally see there may be another way.   ___________________ 📓 Grab Andy’s book (or audiobook) “Soul & Spirit | Health + Healing” = www.GY6.online/SSHH  📕 Join the book launch team for James’ upcoming book = www.GY6.online/james ⭐️ James’ website = www.JamesForVets.com  📳 The Adverse Childhood Experiences Assessment = www.GY6.online/ACE  🎙️GY6 live events = www.GY6.online/events

    8 | Wherever You Go, There You Are (The Two Kathies, part 1)

  7. Aug 31

    7 | Hell's Angels and Other Kinds of Rescue

    As a kid, James gets beaten up by another boy living in an apartment complex filled with Hell’s Angels. His four-foot-something redheaded mother finds out… … marches straight into the middle of the bikers… … pounds on the door… … and confronts the boy’s mother. 🐾 What follows is an unexpected lesson in courage, respect, protection, and the strange ways people can become connected. But that story opens the door to something much deeper. James talks about being placed in a group home, the abuse he experienced there, his mother’s own recovery from alcoholism, and the year of his teenage life spent moving through treatment centers for an addiction he says he never actually had. 👇 The more nobody believed him, the more James learned how to tell them exactly what they expected to hear. And along the way, he received an education he never needed. ⭐️ Sometimes the solution to one problem becomes the beginning of another. This episode explores what happens when we manage symptoms without ever reaching the root—and why real healing requires going deeper…   ___________________   📕 Join the book launch team for James’ upcoming book = www.GY6.online/james  ⭐️ James’ website = www.JamesForVets.com  📓 Grab Andy’s book (or audiobook) “Soul & Spirit | Health + Healing” = www.GY6.online/SSHH

    7 | Hell's Angels and Other Kinds of Rescue

  8. Aug 24

    6 | The past explains it (even though it doesn’t excuse it)

    The story of trauma and chaos and confusion didn’t begin with the military, service dogs, or the battlefield. It began much earlier. With a teenage mother… A broken marriage… An abusive stepfather… Constant military moves… And a childhood where chaos became normal. In this episode of Tethered, we go back to the beginning and meet Kathy—James’ mother—and Uncle Lloyd, two people carrying enormous amounts of trauma of their own. (Nope, their stories didn’t start with the *first moment of trauma either.) 👇 James recounts the violence inside his home, the years of alcoholism and abuse, and the way those experiences shaped his understanding of anger, survival, trust, and family. Then the story takes an even darker turn. After Kathy suffers a brutal attack, her life begins to unravel. James is temporarily placed outside the home, and Uncle Lloyd— a Coast Guard veteran carrying his own unresolved trauma— steps into the story in a way James would never forget. ⭐️ But this episode isn’t simply about what happened. It’s about why people become who they become. Disorder. Decision. Drive. Trauma. Environment. Responsibility. Survival. Sometimes the better question isn’t, “What’s wrong with you?” Sometimes it’s: “What happened to you… and what are you still carrying?” ❤️‍🩹 Or, to ask it another way… Do we have compounding chaos or do we have compounding order…?       ___________________ 📓 Grab Andy’s book (or audiobook) “Soul & Spirit | Health + Healing” = www.GY6.online/SSHH  📕 Join the book launch team for James’ upcoming book = www.GY6.online/james  ⭐️ James’ website = www.JamesForVets.com  📳 The Adverse Childhood Experiences Assessment = www.GY6.online/ACE  🎙️GY6 live events = www.GY6.online/events

    6 | The past explains it (even though it doesn’t excuse it)
See All (14)

About

The things we're tied to really matter. Sometimes "success" and healing is a matter of being lassoed to the right people, the right places... and even the right dog.

Information

  • Creator
    James Dickerson, Andy Jenkins
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Tethered