While I Breathe, I Hope: Rebuilding Our Dreams & Rebranding Our Lives

Today, I sit down solo to share personal reflections from the book launch event I recently hosted for the anthology Warriors of Hope: Voices That Inspire, created by Janine Hernandez of the Book Publishing Academy. In this episode, I read my full chapter, Rebuilding Our Dreams, Rebranding Our Lives, and unpack the story behind it — how hope continues to guide me through life’s darkest battles. I talk about hosting the powerful book launch event in Phoenix, where proceeds went to the She Thrives Foundation to help women escaping domestic violence. Witnessing the courage of those survivors reminded me that even after pain, there’s purpose.

In this solo session, I dive into the reality of what hope really means when life seems impossible. I share moments from my own story — growing up in an abusive home, navigating my father’s addictions, facing betrayal and heartbreak, and rebuilding after failed dreams. Each of these experiences became a lesson in holding on to hope while setting healthy boundaries, even when everything seemed lost. I also revisit how Couple O’ Nukes itself was born out of failure, becoming a living symbol of what happens when you refuse to give up.

Throughout the episode, I reflect on the Latin phrase Dum Spiro Spero — “While I Breathe, I Hope.” My goal today is to remind anyone listening that as long as you’re breathing, your story isn’t over. Hope isn’t about reclaiming what’s gone; it’s about creating something new. Whether your world is falling apart or just changing shape, you still have the power to rebuild, rebrand, and inspire others through your own testimony.

https://youtu.be/Eerm7TUQK98

Website: https://coupleonukes.com

Exodus, Honor Your Heart, & Thrive Alcohol Recovery: https://www.coupleonukes.com/affiliates/

Want to be a guest on Couple O' Nukes? Send me a message on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726279485588093e83e0e007

Sign Up For A PodMatch Account: https://www.joinpodmatch.com/coupleonukes

*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode, a couple of nooks. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and today's episode is actually a solo one. I am here with my copy of Warriors of Hope. I know it's hard to see if you're watching 'cause of the Light, but Warriors of Hope, voices that Inspire Spearhead by Janine Hernandez, founder of the Book Publishing Academy.

And for those of you who did not catch it. My last video before this, my last episode before this, it was actually the event where this book was launched at test all Mexican kitchen in Phoenix, Arizona. It was an amazing time. We had a huge turnout. We sold out of copies of the book. We donated money to the She Thrive Foundation to help women in domestic violence and abusive relationships get scholarships to fund education, to get them out of those relationships.

So, or help them out in whatever way. And so it, it is really awesome. The greatest part of the event for me personally, not only the honor of hosting it, but it was so great to see so many people proclaim faith, the name of Jesus Christ in just a, a beautiful spirit of salvation and redemption through hardships.

These were women who, some of the women were raped. Some of the women had children who were murdered. I mean this, these women had been through. Terrible, terrible things. They were forced to wipe their own blood off of the floor after being beat. Some of them were locked up for it. It was just in insane, honestly.

Each person who went up there, I just was in, in shock and awe at, at how,

how horrible the world can be. You know, I, I had to pause there 'cause I, I, I'm not even sure how to describe it. You know, like you hear of domestic violence in. Abuse and people had this light image of. A partner beating their partner and obviously not light image in, in the sense that is a light image, but compared to the reality of of how much deeper it goes, it goes deeper than just physically beating their partner.

It there is emotional, spiritual, it. Manipulation and weaponization. There is power and control. There is belittlement, there is gaslighting narcissism, there is love bombing. There's like a lot, I know a lot of these just sound like key words because they're trending and a lot of them have been used in conversations improperly.

But that is, those are all core parts of domestic violence and sexual abuse in any abusive relationship, toxic relationship, however you wanna describe it. But these women. It really showed that it was more than that. Like I said, murder, raping, sexual assault, manipulation, financial bondage was a huge thing.

But all of them spoke up as a voice that inspired as a warrior of hope and. I am so impressed by Janine for putting this together. It really was such a beautiful event, like I said, to see so much light and such terrible darkness. Some of the darkest parts of humanity. I find it the darkest part because like there, there is murder and rape on the street.

Of course. But to have it in your own home, in a, in a relationship with someone you trust, someone you gave your life to. A lot of these relationships, the women had given up their connections with their family because, you know, the, the abuser wanted to isolate them. They had given up their friends, their schedule, their time.

To be so betrayed by someone you, you love. And I've done episodes before on the show on betrayal trauma, if you're free to check those out. Uh, talking about how long it takes to heal from these wounds, uh, especially if you're a child and a parent, if you're in a relationship, like there is a lot that goes into this.

And so it was such an honor to host this event, to help provide that space. Another medium through which people could be heard. As I said in my introduction at the book launch. This was about recovering loudly so that others don't die quietly. I think that's an amazing quote I've heard before and I really hope that like the subtitle of this book, voices That Inspire, that these stories are inspiring.

Yes, they are gruesome and highlights some of the horror of humanity, but there is a message of hope in each of them from a warrior of hope. All the people spoke up. A lot of them, it was their first time speaking up. They were crying while they read. It really moved me, and honestly, it made me feel really inadequate about my chapter.

My chapter as we're gonna get into today, because so many people were talking about domestic violence and sexual assault. I wanted to cover more of the hope aspect and more of the, uh. Emotional side of it, right? I wanted the book to be well-rounded. I was a contributing author and I wanted my chapter to kind of balance it out amongst all of the domestic violence and sexual assault.

Why I do touch upon that briefly. I really want to focus on hope in the concept of hope. I think it mirrors best in the book of Jeremiah, right? Uh, sorry, Jeremiah. Wrote supposedly, uh, lamentations, you know, that's who's accredited as writing it historically and canonically, but lamentations from the Bible, A, a collection of the, the poetry and the weepings of the fall and destruction, uh, uh, of, you know, the people.

And in the land, uh, once Babylon took over in the midst, I believe is chapter three of, of Lamentations. There is that message of hope. And so I really wanted my chapter to be a message of hope. You know, I, I could write all about the hardships I've been through, but I felt like with so many people covering that I want to really focus on the hope.

And of course, all the other authors touched upon hope and it it was beautiful closure for a lot of them and a new beginning for most of them. So, so proud of all the contributing authors. And so I want to get into my chapter. I'm actually gonna read it straight from the book. And. If you buy the book, each chapter is from a different author, like I said, who wrote their story.

A lot of them are also solo authors who have a book coming out, um, either after this or already have one. My chapter is on page 59. It is titled, rebuilding Our Dreams, rebranding Our Lives, and I'm going to get into that right now. The chapter title I chose is made up of the two subtitles on my podcast logo, but they're more than just branding For marketing the show, there are two actions that we will all have to do life.

Inevitably, we'll go a different way than we plan at one point or another. As a result, we'll have to take action, whether that's starting over, recovering, pivoting to something new or just moving on, and this can leave us feeling a mixture of emotions rebuilding and rebranding. However that may look for you requires a logical plan, but it also requires a whole lot of heart and hope.

I'm not here to debate whether hope is learned or a natural feeling or anything like that in this chapter, I hope. See what I did there to merely emphasize the importance of hope when it comes to living our most fulfilling lives, no matter where you've been, where you're at, or where you're trying to be.

Along those lines, I'd like to share something I discovered while living in South Carolina. You can find it on most of their license plates or state theme merchandise. It's the phrase Doom, spiro sparrow. Or in simpler words, while I breathe, I hope. Don't you love that? I do. Because the truth which can be hard to see a missed tragedy is that as long as we're alive, hope exists.

No matter what you've been through or what you're going through currently, as long as you're alive, you have opportunities. Therefore, there's always hope. Some will try and counteract me by saying that sometimes life seems hopeless and that death has more hope and it than life. I understand because I've been there before.

In fact, I almost feel hypocritical saying that I'm a warrior of hope. At first, I felt very qualified because I've maintained strong levels of hope through some grim events during my life. I almost believed that I had maintained it throughout all of them, but then I flashed back to when I was gonna take my life.

It's a memory that I rarely think about, but I remembered it as I started to write this. What is suicide other than no hope left and what is no hope left other than giving up entirely on life? Obviously, I'm still here. So I must have rediscovered hope just in time, right? Unfortunately not. I had finally reached a truly hopeless mindset.

What stopped me was divine intervention. I was forced to live through God, ultimately and intimately knowing my heart, which was designed by him, and then warped by the world. Yet the thought occurred to me that I'm not a warrior of hope to be a shining example of someone who has always had perfect hope.

My purpose and mission is to give hope, not to have always had it. My purpose and a mission is to have the duty to ensure that no one else has to go through such a state of hopelessness as I did. And if they do that, they quickly get out without the need of divine intervention. So. Let's briefly get into some of the tragedies in my life where I both lost and rediscovered hope, and may my tale be impactful to you and others.

In particular, I wanna focus on three different parts of my life revolving around hope, my father's addictions, my unfinished marriage, and my derailed work. Those three situations all required me to drastically pivot my life, and without hope, it would've been impossible. As mentioned earlier, we often have plans in life that get ruined and without a belief that they can be salvaged, rebuilt, or redirected.

Many people fall into hopeless sorrow. This leads to failed and thrown away dreams that could have been reborn or saved if the person had been able to hope. While it's been very difficult for me to rebrand, rebuild, and create differently in my life. I've also experienced a great success and joy of still achieving most of what I set out to do, and then in some cases, even more than what was originally planned.

My discovery and journey with Hope was over the course of the past few years from transitioning to civilian life and unexpectedly building a business to friends who betrayed me in a collapsing family. A lot happened during the time of chaos and change. During this time, I became Mr. Whiskey. That's who I am now and there's a lot to that name.

Everyone calls me that and I believe it's who I'll be for quite a while longer. Before that, I was petty Officer Hennessy, nothing more than government and military property. Before that, I was just Vince, who was an outcasted boy trapped in a controlling, conforming, and abusive household. And before even that, I was, according to my father's report, a spawn for the Legion.

And Satan meant to be named Damien and become the antichrist. No, that's not satire or a joke. He truly believes that, and it was the foundation of the religious weaponization that would mark the beginning of my long and difficult spiritual journey. My life from birth, as you can tell, was already hell, no pun intended.

From there, it went deeper into hell, layer by layer, until eventually I started to climb out, which required plenty of hope, faith, discipline, and support. Along the way, I encountered demons of all kinds from corrupted military leaders to the most wicked of women I've been lied to, portrayed and abandoned.

I've been used for money, sex, revenge, jealousy, spike time, and social status. I've been borderline groomed and sexually assaulted. I've been mentally, spiritually, and emotionally abused. I've been ridiculed, outcasted, stereotyped, and labeled. This was all while in toxic and abusive environments. Some of which included domestic violence, gaslighting, religious weaponization control, and conformity.

I've suffered continuously all while trusting and believing in humanity, time and again after each incident. From torturous, unrecorded, love to the unexpected betrayals of my closest friends I've endured through more than most, almost always, while completely alone and lamenting. I say that not to extract pity nor empathy, but rather to build an authority based on experience.

It's not a competition as there are people out there who's had it worse than me. There are also people who have experienced easier lives that I envy, yet they suffered internally. We're all receptive to the things of life quite differently and how we react and feel. Everything varies from person to person.

I used to believe that hope and love could conquer all that anything was possible. So I tried again and again. Forgiving the same enemies, trying with the same failed relationships, trusting the people who had continuously betrayed me, befriending the same kinds of toxic and selfish people, and doing everything as if I had never suffered before, so that everyone had a fair chance.

I still believe in hope in humanity because it is possible, but not blindly. So several failed relationships and working with addicted individuals in recovery taught me the most important lesson of all. Is having love and hope with boundaries. Truly, it sounds like common sense, but being held emotionally hostage can become routine for people who are optimistic, hopeful people pleases empathetic, in my case, all the above.

It also takes us to the first situation which has impacted my life the most, my father's addiction. My father's extreme struggle with alcoholism and drugs taught me the lesson of love, hope, and boundaries. Better than working with anyone in addiction recovery on my show or through events. I personally experienced the freedom of loving and hoping with boundaries.

When I changed my relationship with him, it wasn't always like that. Of course, originally, I let my father do whatever he wanted. Despite my best efforts, I inadvertently enabled him. He took advantage of me and others and even endangered my life in the life of those I cared about. Unlike the rest of my family, I had hope and still have hope that he can recover one day.

Yet this had come at the cost of my own wellbeing for a long time. Nowadays, while I still hope for him, I refuse to see him if he's not sober, and I will leave his company if he's dangerous. I don't support his destructive behaviors, but I will help him with the consequences as safely as I can. I love and forgive him, but with accountability and boundaries rather than a clean slate.

At the same time, I don't hold resentment and distrust over him, honestly. I feel guilty not giving him all of my time and energy as I had been. But then I realized that I could still hope for him and love him, and be there for him without costing so much of myself. I have found a balance of hope and realistic understanding that has formed a stronger and healthier relationship between my father and I.

And it has drastically improved my health and reduced the stress. It was all putting into my life without hope and believing that he'll one day get better and that it's never too late for any addict. I wouldn't be able to have the relationship with him that I do now. Regardless of love or boundaries, I would be missing out on having a father.

And while it isn't perfect and not what I want.

Not what I want it to be. It's still beautiful and productive. It required pivoting and rebuilding and hope, a hope that was balanced, but powerful. My relationship with my father isn't the only one that has left me in a position of rebuilding and recovery. I was actually left at the altar, so to speak, in a new state.

All by myself. After leaving my family, friends, and career, while I wasn't at a physical altar and at an actual wedding, I had moved to Georgia to get married and create a new life with the woman I loved. However, she wasn't there when I got there. When I arrived, she had moved to a different state. Things were different between us after that.

Giving up so much to get to that place only to be alone definitely leaves someone hopeless on top of feeling betrayed, abandoned, and hollow. I had been driving about 16 hours a weekend across state lines to visit my then fiance sometimes just to watch her do her homework because she was too busy to go on dates or do anything.

We had been deeply in love. She was the reason I moved to Georgia and left so much behind. Yeah, she wasn't there when I got there, and without her, there was no point in being in Georgia. That could have been it. I could have gotten there and just sank into a miry pit of depression and hopelessness. I could have hated everything and spent the past few years being a victim filled with rage and bitterness.

To a degree I was that way every day. I reminded that what I came to Georgia for never happened, and I lament over it. At the same time, though, I look around each day. Remember all that I've accomplished because of being here, and I feel hope that amazing opportunities and blessings abound here regardless of my initial reason for being here.

Not only do I feel hope because of that, but I needed hope to have made it past the initial hurt. In fact, I, as it is with many people who move, wasn't in a position to just move away again, so I needed hope that I could recover and build a new life in Georgia. For the most part, I didn't have forming meaningful connections with people and being a part of different communities.

All of that can be summarized in what I consider the second lesson. See, without hope failed, destinations become rock bottoms. They become places of victimization, depression, and maybe even self-harm or suicide. With hope failed destinations merely become new beginnings and turning points in life. Hope allows you to look at where you are and see where you can go from there, or what you can do there now, regardless of why you went there to begin with, or what you were supposed to do.

While my relationship with my then fiance and my father were changing, the biggest and most significant part of my journey of hope was my company, KA of Nukes. It is not at all what I wanted or had imagined. In fact, it's become so far different and I've done things so unexpected that past me wouldn't believe it even if I went back in time and told him all that's happened.

What is now a company centered around self-improvement, global connection, and helpful resources through podcasting, writing, speaking, preaching, and comedy was once just a simple idea. The original concept was a podcast that was mainly a comedy with some life advice. Along the way, strictly focused on and hosted by nuclear operators or in morph fitting words, a couple of nukes minus the F and add an apostrophe and make it southern couple of nukes.

Sounds like a unique and great idea, right? The issue is that a dream like that required more than me. I needed other nukes to be invested and interested in this dream, nukes who could see the bigger picture and who believed in me and what I wanted to achieve. Now, a single day goes by where I don't wish for that.

And for those people in my life daily, I imagine myself sitting in a studio with a couple of nukes hosting this amazing podcast that grew so much faster than what I've been able to do on just my own. Yet the reality is that no nukes were into it. Most saw it as a joke, called a stupid, or had other unsavory opinions about it.

The few who did it were friends or coworkers who were stuck on the ship and bored. Not many would do it during their actual free time. As I jokingly say, the show is actually just a nuke rather than couple of nukes. So with no other nukes involved, I had to pivot to military mental health when I got outta the service and lost my ties to the nuclear community even further, the transition in military mental health was supposed to just be temporary.

At the time, I, I thought that I would one day find a nuke or, or two as permanent host and that I could dive back into the nuclear community and find people for guests. It never happened. Months went by and I got put into a box and labeled as a military guy and the world niched me down and nothing more than a veteran helping veterans.

That's an honorable mission, but it was far from my calling. I didn't want the military to be my identity nor the rest of my life. I wanted to help everyone, and so I pivoted, rebranded, and rebuilt. Again. The name couple of nukes is far from SEO Friendly and isn't very clear in terms of branding and marketing.

Well, that means that my show is at a huge disadvantage compared to other podcasts and for when people are searching online. As a result, it grows significantly slower than it should, yet it will never. Change from what it's called. Trust me. It's been considered many times. But not only do I honor my origin story and fail dream in keeping the name, but it's the embodiment of hope.

To me, it boldly displays. Here is what was made from that which failed. Here is something even larger and more impactful than imagined and originally planned. So every time I introduce the show. Look at my website or bring up my company in conversation. I am reminded of how I've had to rebrand and rebuild while staying true to myself without hope.

I would've just given up, and there have been plenty of times where I wanted to quit. In fact, about 50% of podcasters don't get past 10 episodes, and only about 4% of all podcasters make it to 100 episodes. No one believed in me or supported me, especially at first. Even now most people scoff at me being a podcaster and doubt that I'll ever do anything successful, many begged me to change the name of my show to just give up.

However, I have hope that I, along with God are making the show into something for greater than it ever would've been had it truly been a couple of nukes just as hope turn fails. Just as hope turns failed destinations into beginnings for new journeys. So it is that with hope, failed dreams are the foundations of new ones and often better ones.

My life, like many, has thousands of moving parts. It's a half messy, half structured system of countless intersecting moments, both blessings and curses, spanning relationships, faith, career, and identity. Because of that, I could easily write a whole book on the ways hope has shown up in my life, especially after all of the abuse I've endured.

But the three stories I've shared here hold his true essence. That's the beauty of hope. It's not reserved for perfect people or perfect circumstances. Hope shows up for all of us in whatever we're going through or whatever we've been through. As long as you're breathing, you can hope. Maybe your relationships are unraveling faster than you can piece them back together.

Maybe you've landed in a place that looks nothing like what you imagined. Maybe your dreams have completely collapsed, but if you're still breathing, you're not finished because there are still opportunities to rebuild, rebrand, pivot, and begin again. You might not see them right away. They might feel like compromises, but that's what hope is.

It's not about reclaiming what was lost, but about rising up to create something new. Something better, something that just might turn out to be the life you were always meant to live.

So that is my chapter from warriors of Folk Voices that inspire, as you just heard, I, I chose three pivotal moments in my life, or prolonged moments. You know, moments that, moments that are ongoing ever going, you know, in situations really. I really liked the Doom, Spiro Sparrow. Honestly, when I was younger and in the military, I thought it was stupid.

I, I would look at the South Carolina license plate, like this is stupid. This is corny. But now that I've matured in my journey of faith and working in suicide prevention, addiction recovery, and mental health and self-improvement, I've grown an admiration and an enjoyment for. Powerful, but small messages.

And when you look past the fact that it's on every license plate and, and you get past the, oh, that's just corny when you actually look at it, it is a truly beautiful message. While I breathe, I hope suicide, as Douglas Brinker said on a episode of my show, is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. A permanent solution, you cannot take it back to a temporary problem.

And I know in the midst of the problem, it seems like it's the end of the world and like there is no going back. But there will always be opportunities. And I think that was so beautifully displayed with all the women at the event who had been through violence, domestic violence, sexual assault through emotional manipulation.

Yeah, here they were at this event. After all that inspiring others, becoming authors, and doing so much with the book at other events and in their life and on podcasts, they were all living proof and the embodiment of why I breathe. I hope many of them, myself included, at different points in our life could have given up.

We could have taken our life, but we wouldn't have been able to make the impact that we have now, even if it's just one life. So I highly encourage everyone to have hope and to utilize it. You know, there is a future that is constantly unfolding and you can control it. Not all of it. Obviously, there are things outta your control, but it is amorphous, meaning there's always opportunities.

As long as you're breathing in life, there's gonna be opportunities. Sometimes they don't come as fast as we'd like them to. Sometimes they come. Slower than we want, but there will be opportunities. I think hope can be very difficult because it requires patience, and patience can be very difficult in the midst of tragedy, but I highly encourage everyone listening if you're going through hardship.

I've, I've struggled with this myself to take a step back and to look at the, the long picture. Most of us get the tunnel vision. We can't even see past tomorrow. We can't even see past tonight, and I get that I've been there, but I've also been on the other side of not dying, of not taking my life and of being able to impact others with my story.

In so many different fields. And so I truly believe that keep breathing because as long as you're breathing, you can hope because as long as you're breathing, there are opportunities. Just make it another day, another hour, another minute. And I, I just pray to God that you know. As this fallen world continues to fall apart even further, I just, I, I pray for so many things, for comfort, for peace, for mentorship, for guidance, for discernment, for discipline, for everyone.

And I, you know, pray that this book, this chapter, and even this episode, or the event, or the book, wherever it reaches, has an impact on you or someone you know. I encourage you to check out the Book Publishing Academy with Janine Hernandez. If you want to share your story and you're not sure where to start or where to go to, uh, even if you don't move forward with her.

She's great to get advice about authorship from. You could also reach out to me. I've contributed to several books and publish several books and spearheading some other projects as well, but I encourage you to. Look into writing a book, look into poetry, into songs. There are so many mediums through which we can express ourselves and help others.

It could even be sculpting or painting, or gardening. However you wanna tell your story, I encourage you to share it and to hopefully have an impact on others, or at least to heal yourself. So please get out there and get creating. Be a voice that inspires and be a warrior of hope.