Rising From the Depths with Randy Thompson

she remarried when I was about ten. And when I was very little, one of my earlier memories is sitting down with my brother on the couch and he had to be maybe four, which I was probably like five five or six, and I was like, okay, Ty, let's talk and he's like, what do we talk about it?

real life. But just the idea of the size of the oceans, how much we knew and didn't know about it, and just kind of all the mystery around it really sparked something in me. I had kind of like a naturally curious mind already, and it was just kind of one of these things like I wanted to be an explorer. I wanted to go to space and wanted to dive in the sea. You know, It's like I wanted to see what was out there kind of at the extreme reaches.

Even early on, it was one of those things as a kid, I think that like, I'm somebody who's always had a ton of interests, and I get very obsessed with things, and I have ADHD and so like all of my attention funnels into one pursuit for a bright short time, and then I usually just burn out on it and go on to something else. That was one of those things that kind of kept creeping up for

me and kept coming back. Was I'm sure it tied on some level just to like this need to explore and to mine the depths of the mysteries of the world. I got obsessed with space as well. And then there was an image of NASA training their astronauts, I think in Houston, but training them in a pool with divers, and it just kind of blew my mind. Is like this amazing connection of the two.

mom said when I wrote that. So when my wife and I found out we were going to have our daughter, I took a picture of that and send it to my mom.

at something. That's a moment when like my daughter comes to me with kind of an open heart and open curiosity, and for whatever reason, either the timing or the way she's expressing or whatever, I respond in frustration and I see just like a fraction of that spark start to flicker, and I think that it's we're not going to be perfect, We're going to screw it up a million times. But to me, it's a good kind of reminder whenever that happens of just what we're actually dealing with here.

I did pursue acting there. My wife and I ended up getting cast opposite each other in a play, so that's the first time we met, was getting cast, and we just became best friends and we were just kind of obsessed with each other for a year, even though we're I was in a long term relationship at the time, she was just getting out of a relationship, and we were just really intense friends. We wanted to hang out all the time. There was nothing, as far as I

could tell, romantic about it. Until all of a sudden it became very clear to me like, oh, I'm in love with this person. So I was honest with my partner and we ended that relationship and I started this one. And then my wife, about six months after we started dating, got into grad school in California, and she had already been applying before we were ever in our relationship, and so we decided, because I really loved living in New York,

we were going to do long distance. She was going to be in California for a couple of years, I'd be in New York. And after about five or six months of that, we were just like, I don't want

to do anything other than be where you are. Everything else kind of lost its luster, and I was just like, if this means setting aside other dreams that I have right now, my number one goal is to not I don't mean to say settle in terms of any kind of negativity towards my ex, but I had taken on certain opinions about the rest of my life that I was just like, it's going to be this at this level, and that's going to be fine, and maybe some years down the line will have kids, and maybe some years

down the line will get a divorce. And that was part of my thinking of my future was just like, this is inevitably what's going to happen. Because I had become very comfortable in this life that we built, and then I met Beth and I was just like, I can't not be with this person. I can't say to the rest of my life, Oh, it's going to be fine. Knowing that this person and this feeling that I have about this person is out there for me, it was the most important thing to shape our lives in a

way that we could be with each other. And so I moved with this expectation that I was going to still be able to pursue acting in LA.

And Beth has said since she knew almost immediately after we started dating that she wanted to be married to me, and that she wanted to have kids with me, and that it wasn't this lifelong dream that she was like, I'm going to have this kind of wedding and I'm gonna have this number of kids, But really that when we met each other, we knew this is the person who I wanted to share this with.

of people do. I wouldn't say late in life, even though the medical term is like what geriatric pregnancy is like thirty two were something ridiculous like that. It's so stupid. It just it means nothing. But you know, we were anxious to kind of start the next chapter. And it

took us a long time. Took us a total of about two and a half years, with about five losses of pregnancy throughout at various stages, so a couple that were really early and then a couple were not really early, and it just, it truly was the hardest thing I think that either of us has ever done. Maybe still it just it tested us in such a profound way because for a lot of people I think, who have gone through miscarriages or pregnancy losses, there's at least in

the early stage. For us, we felt very private about it. I know my wife in particular was having a really hard time with just battling the concept of there's something wrong with us or something wrong with me, or something

wrong with her physically. You know, it's just these kind of little things that are just chipping away at you and for our relationship, so much of this became task orient or goal oriented, where we're trying to get to this place and so we have to do X, Y and Z, and it's just about checking boxes off and just putting our heads down and going through it. And also we had moments where it was difficult for either of us to be there for the other person in

the way that each of us needed. I think both of us maybe we're speaking to therapists at the time, but it just, you know, there's moments where you're both just so low, and it's like there are times where she's down and I can pick her up and vice versa. And then there were times where we're both just kind of done and just so low about all of it.

And at various times we thought, Okay, we're done, we're not going to try, we're just not meant to have biological children, and then laid in the game, someone else kind of helped us see that. Every time we got a positive pregnancy test. That is something to celebrate, It is something to be We invest in the joy of that moment, even if that means in two weeks this is going to crush us, because grieving for a potential loss was never going to help soften that loss. It

was always going to be horrible. So why not take this moment now to just be so excited and happy that we made it this far. And so we did that, and luckily, a couple weeks later she was still pregnant.

And then a couple weeks later we had some tests done and everything looked pretty good, and then it just kind of, you know, the good news kept on stacking, and then all of a sudden, she's nine months and almost a day before she's due and it's time, and it just was like, looking back on that now, it's just it feels like it happened to two different people. It's so hard to put myself back in that mindset of when all that was going on. But at the time, and it was, it was all consuming, it was our

whole entire lives. Maybe about a year into it, we started feeling like we could talk to other people about it, and there's this shame of around it that I don't even know where it came from. It's like we came from two incredibly loving, supportive parents who just didn't pressure us at all about having kids. It wasn't like our moms were sitting there being like Wenesday, when are you

gonna give me a friend of time. It didn't happen, and so it just felt like it just was there, and we felt like I don't own enough of a sob story to be able to talk to somebody else about this. You know, I have friends who had, from the outside seemingly so much harder journeys with getting pregnant, and so we always felt very much like, there's nothing wrong, it's just taking a long time. Let's just kind of

keep it to ourselves. And then over time we started speaking to more and more people, and it was just shocking how many women in our lives, very close family members, very close friends, who had gone through this exact same thing or similar things and never talk to us about it. And it's just like there's just not a mechanism other than a podcast about going through ourd stuff, but there's just not as much of a societal mechanism to talk

about hardshit in the same way. And I think that there, especially for something that is very personally traumatic but from the outside seems like, oh, well, everybody's gone through this. It was so hard for us not to judge ourselves on this theoretical hierarchy of trauma.

I mean that's life. Yeah, but it's a beautiful thing, man, it's a beautiful thing that you guys were able. And not to say that you never had an argument or got into it about it, because we know you're not unicorns, but the fact that at the end of the day you're both still here present to beautiful kids. Yeah, I mean, was the risk worth the reward?

Only existence is due to every other decision, every other moment that happened before that, and so it just feels like, yeah, of course it was worth it, because I would do that one hundred times and one hundred times worse to get to these two kids.

minutes away from my house. And I'm just like, I've been living in California now for almost ten years and never even just like gave it a second thought of like this thing that I always wanted to do. That for several hundred dollars and a weekend, basically you could just like check that dream off and make it a reality. Now I look back, I'm.

the first time. They basically like, have you put your face in the water, and then they have you kneel on the bottom and do these skills that are just basically are just kneeling in six feet of water in a pool, and I'm flopping back and forth. Everyone else in the class is just like stock still, and I'm like looking around at these people, just being like, I'm always good at things, why am I so.

Why would you dive at night in the blackness? And then I was probably diving for like a month and a half. Then I was like, I want to try that night, and I went and I was super overwhelmed. And I'm not a great swimmer, which diving obvious choice. I like was getting just like battered by the waves and swallowing saltwater, and I just was like near panic, basically, And I had an instructor who was nearby at the time, who basically was shepherding me, and we went down. I

couldn't make it work. He basically called the dive, and then afterwards was like you and me, next weekend, just the two of us were going to go out. We're going to make this work. And so we went out and it was just watching him. Everything was calm, nothing was a problem. Everything was just like, slow it down. You're trying to basically rush through this thing and force your way into being good at it, and what you need to do is take a step back and go slow,

and that's all you really need to do. And literally, I just like making that shift. Took a step back, started going slow. It changed everything for me. We had this amazing dive. We saw a ton of octopus, which are like some of my favorite animals, all of these

amazing fish, and it's just diving at night. For anyone who hasn't done it, I think it can carry an air of just like the Black Ocean, which is nearly infinite, is out there filled with massive things that want to eat you and you can't see any of them, and you're just going to carry this little flashlight around and be like, I'm fine. And the first time we did that,

that's exactly what it felt like. And then for a lot of people who like to camp or anything like that, if you go for walks in the woods at night and you have this pool of light around you and you just kind of that's your whole world. If you sit there and obsess about what it is one hundred feet in that direction, then you're not going to do anything. And so it was just like helping me to kind of be present, be in the moment, focus on this pool of light that is my whole world, and just it.

And I was just like this I can't stand this, dude, I need to like, So we got on the boat. We actually separated into two groups.

do this. So I went up and when I get there, there's a group that's already kind of geared up, like finishing up their process, and then him and this guy Mark and the instructor and then this guy who I was just like you walking up obviously it had to be and so and I walk up to the instructor and say hi, and he was like, well, there this other group is getting ready to go out and they're all dive masters and hire, so they're pretty experienced. He's like, if you want to dive with them, you can go

with them, or you can stick with us. We're just going to kind of do a tour with this guy Mark, and I in my head said to myself, you need to be a better person here. You need to open yourself up to the possibility that this guy's not just a dick. Yes, he's annoying, whatever, Maybe learn something about him. Don't immediately just place him into the I'm done with you box. And so I decided to dive with them. So I geared up. We go and we discuss the

dive plan. And when people dive there, I would say they stay around like sixty to eighty feet of depth, so deep, but not when you're diving, that's not really anything out of the ordinary. Sixty is is very common. So we decided to go a little bit deeper because the sky Mark had never been that deep. I think

he had done a night dive before. Anyway, we're going out and we're all kind of fighting current and breathing a little heavy, and when you're doing that, you're going through your air quicker, and then physics comes into play. When you're the deeper you go the faster, your error is consumed because it gets compressed. And so the instructor was checking our air periodically and it was basically Mark, then the instructor, and then me at the back. And I felt very comfortable and I was just happy to

kind of trail. So we're diving and we got pretty deep. I think we got to around a hundred feet and the instructor turns around and gives me the sign for my air and I tell em I check, and it was on the lower side, but not anywhere kind of in a risk zone. And I see him turn to Mark and ask him what his air level is. And because of the visibility in your lights, I could see that that was happening. I couldn't see a call in

response or anything like that. So he turns back to me and immediately signals for a safety stop, which means you ascend to a safe depth, usually twenty to fifteen feet, and you hang there for three minutes. And that just allows the nitrogen that your body's on gas to dissipate. Basically, you do that to allow all of those gas bubbles to come out of your tissues so they don't get absorbed into your bloodstream and go to your brain or your.

little bit complicated. You have to be really careful of your buoyancy because as you get shallower, you speed up too, so you have to basically compensate for the physics wanting to propel you to the surface. And it's night, so it's in pitch black. You know, you have no visual reference for any of that, so you're just staring at your gauges. And basically I knew something was up, but I didn't know what. And I see he starts to

ascend for a safety stop. I start looking at my gauges and I'm ascending for my safety stop, and I'm going very slowly because I'm terrified. It's so easy when you're a new diver to just blow past that safety stop and you're out of control. I mean, there's just things that can happen to you. You can have an embolism, so your lungs would basically explode because you're holding on

this gas that's expanding inside your body. Those nitrogen bubbles can get absorbed into your bloodstream and can cause real issues. There's a lot that can go wrong that is drilled into you from day one about safety stops, maintaining your buoyancy, and not rocketing to the surface. So basically, all that is to say, we're ascending very slowly, and I can see the instructor on my side, and I'm kind of going up and up, and I hit my safety stop.

I do my safety stop, and then I go to the surface and the instructor's on the surface and he's like, where's Mark, And I said, I don't know. I thought he was with you. And he's just looking around, screaming his name. And I look out a little bit out to see I would say, maybe one hundred yards or so, and I can see his dive light, just a green tank marker light floating on the surface, and so we yell Mark, Mark, Mark, and he immediately yells back. Hey, like, okay,

swim over to us. We're like, oh, thank god I didn't. He was like, what happened? I said, I don't know. You signal for the safety stop? What hey? He's like yeah, I checked Mark's air and he was extremely low on air. So we're sitting there talking and I'm looking and you know, you're bobbing up and down, and it's night so you can't really see anything but the light, and I notice it's staying a decent distance away and yell at him again, hey,

come over to here. He's like, okay, got it, and then is not really moving, and so the instructor says to me, let's swim over to him, just make sure that everything's okay. So we start swimming. We get over there and he's face up, eyes closed, looking like he's sleeping. And I thought he was just messing with us. So then the instructor, who's also a doctor, immediately recognized that something was up, starts trying to revive him, yelling his name, and then turns to me and says, I'm going to

do rescue brats. I'm going to swim him into the shore. I need you to get to the shore as fast as you can and get help. And so I just take off and start booking it. And I'm not a good strong swimmer, and I've had very little experience swimming like intensely to try to get help, and so I'm just let alone in the night, right Yeah. Yeah, So I'm just like adrenaline is firing. I am just as everything that I have I am putting into swimming to

shore to get help as quickly as I can. And we're probably a good two hundred two hundred fifty yards off shore. It was a decent distance, and we get maybe I would say I'm about fifty yards away, and I start realizing that if I have a problem as I get out, I am not going to be able to solve that. I'm going to get knocked under and I'm going to drown. And so I took a second just to steady myself and just like focus in, slow down, and say, okay, here's what I need to do to

get out safely. So I start and then I see a light near me and this other group of divers that had gone out just before us. They surface and I yell marks in trouble, and here's what's happening. And kind of give them a quick I need you to get to shore to get nine to one one. So one of the divers immediately goes to shore.

the shore dragging him out of the water. And so by the time they got him onto the shore, EMTs were already there, firefighters were already there. They were working on reviving him. And then we stuck around for maybe an hour, had conversations with the Sheriff's apartment. They arrived to start an investigation to figure out what happened, and then they leave. The fire department ambulance leaves and they say, hey, we were just let you know we were able to

get a pulse, so we just all immediate relief. Just thank God, obviously something's hopefully he's going to be okay. Yeah, So the next day I had a tattoo appointment. I was getting this massive octopus tattoo to commemorate this milestone that I achieved, finally getting this advance and really just like marking this time in my life. And I'm driving on the way to the appointment because I decided I'm

still going to get it. Obviously this happened, This was scary, but it's a nice kind of tie in too to remember that. And I got a text on the way saying, Hey, I just want you to know Mark passed away.

minute of every moment. Why did I dive with them, Why didn't I do this differently? Why didn't I check his air? You know, all of this stuff, and just beating myself up about it. And then they scheduled a memorial for the next day on the beach of Vigil, basically to kind of have our whole community to come together.

And his wife was there, and I knew she was going to be there, and they had kind of given me a heads up saying this is going to happen, and so I was really nervous about even being there, but I wanted to apologize for her naturally, bro yeah, yeah, And I wanted to tell her I was sorry and

that answer questions I guess if she had any. And someone introduced us, and she immediately just like grabbed me and hugged me and was just like the first thing she said was thank you for bringing him back to me, and just I just lost it and it was like it was more than anything that this woman who lost her husband less than twenty four hours ago was already like taken care of me in that way, already able to see some sliver of hope out of this event.

Some part of it that wasn't horrible, and so we just like cried together and we, you know, all kind of had this little storytelling circle where we talked about him and had dinner and drinks and went home. And in the end, you know, after an entire investigation of how it all happened and an autopsy and everything, the answers that we have were that there is nothing that

any of us could have done. What we assume happened is that he had a panic event and shot to the surface from one hundred feet and as we know, that can reak havoc on your body. And so, you know, knowing that now, it's still hard not to feel guilty, it's still hard not to be like I could have checked his air ten minutes before that and known that he was low, and we could have turned around. And yes, all of that's true. But at the same time, we all have to be responsible for ourselves. We have to

be responsible for our own actions. And all I can do is know, now, moving forward, what are these little tiny steps I could make that can solve small problems so they don't become bigger problems. And so it inspired me to go on to rescue diver and now dive mass and be able to train, be able to render more aid to people, and also just to recommit myself to not allowing kind of a box to be checked and say like, okay that I'm done, I got it advanced,

I'm done. I don't need to train anymore. And even I don't think I ever really believed that I was a master of this thing. I don't feel like I'm a master of anything, but I felt like I'm good enough,

It's fine, let's move on to the next thing. And it really just kind of woke me up of you are engaging in an activity in a non life supporting environment, so the things that can go wrong go really wrong, really fast, and it's just a matter of kind of being aware of those things and taking what steps you can on the way to be better.

something's up and I need to deal with this. I am clearly responding to this traumatic event and I needed to talk to someone. And I've been in therapy before. I have very pro therapy across the board for everyone forever, but for myself. Thank God for that though, right Yeah, because to me, there wasn't a stigma attached to it, and I was able to very quickly be like, you need help, and the outside voice, the same one that started firing when Nick was saying, do you want to

be a guest on this podcast? My outside voice was, well, I haven't been through anything. None of this is interesting, there's nothing to talk about. Really was happening. Then, it's just like this didn't happen to you. This woman just lost her husband, these kids just lost their father. They're experiencing trauma. You had a hard day and saw somebody have a hard time. But I was able to step back from that and recognize that that's a liar and

that boss is not helpful. And so I reached out to a bunch of people who specialized in trauma recovery, and so I met with a therapist who's dealt with a lot of people who have been through all kinds of different trauma. We worked through a technique called EMDR. For me, was a really effective way of kind of

processing this event. And also, weirdly, when the Sheriff's department investigator called me to talk through it and basically walk through step by step, that was so therapeutic to me because I was able to just break it all down and work through all of it step by step. And my stepdad's a he's a former share deputy and then a detective, and he was actually at my house. He was in town staying with me when I was on

that time. So oh, I came home and he's the first person I talked to, and it was one in the morning. I was able to just immediately kind of do this dump with him, and he's seen a lot and was able to kind of help me walk through it in the moment. So talking to the other sheriff's investigator and then talking through with this therapist was game changing for me because I was able to really work

through all the things that happened. I was able to give it its weight, to acknowledge that it had affected me in the way that it had been, and also just clued me into moments of just like, yeah, even when you think that you're fine and you're managing it, my wife knew that I wasn't. My kids knew that I wasn't like I was a different person than they had seen the day before. And I wasn't throwing things.

I wasn't punching holes in walls or anything that you kind of see on TV is like this response yeah or whatever, Yeah, right exactly.

one of the main ones. Yeah, But being able to have that experience and have that conviction and knowing, Okay, I know that this isn't right and I need to do something about it because I'm not sure how to crawl out of this. The fact that you did it is one commendable and courageous. So congratulations for that, because that's what I tell most people, Hey, acknowledging it is

step one and most oftentimes so hard to step. And then the fact that you were able to get into EMDR, which we're very familiar with, and for our listeners who don't know that it's basically a talk therapy that implements an eye movement technique. It's highly effective. The studies on it is pretty impressive, and it's so rad The way that you're able to find victory in your vulnerability and refuse to be a hostage to your pride is so cool.

And the fact that you're now a dive master, I think it's so cool, like you had every reason in the world to go, you know what, that's that I've done it, not doing it anymore, I'm out, And you're now a dive master. Bro. That's inspirational, just straight up. That's the very definition of inspiration.

was interested in woodworking and all this stuff. And you kept hearing people from his life talk about this burning curiosity that he had that drove everything, and a number of people talking about like, you know, it was really irritating sometimes because you just wouldn't let something go and wouldn't and it was just like such an amazing kind of eye opening experience to who this person was, a validation of opening myself and trying to check my own

judgmental brain. It was incredibly sad because it was just the loss of the opportunity to really know this person I may not have without this experience. But his wife was there and just again the second I walked in, I brought my wife came with me, and the second I walked in, she just gave us both this huge hug. She thanked us again. She just has been so unbelievably

generous throughout this experience, and so we've maintained contact. We just met right before the holidays to just kind of talk and check in, and it was incredible and she is very open about the fact that she lost her best friend and that this is not it's not like she's coming to me and just like, you know, everything's great. She's really honest about going through it. But it has been so inspirational to me to be able to see her right away just recognize that this is somebody who

pursued something that he loved. And I don't think that anybody who dies following a passion is like, oh, I was really happy to die scuba diving, you know, It's just like he died doing what he loved. It's like it's always going to suck to die, I think for most of us. But I just her ability to just kind of look on the other side and say that this is somebody who was you know, I think he was in his sixties and just was still going after

things that he was passionate about. And all of these people clearly had loved him and experienced that drive and that curiosity, and that that was incredibly inspirational to me.

your son. I think it's important for people to understand that post traumatic stress is nothing more than a normal reaction to an otherwise abnormal situation. You're completely normal, You're not abnormal, right right. And I think that's where people get so caught, is they're like, oh, something's wrong with me, and I'm fundactally right. No. It is a built in

self protection mechanism. I just think it's important to point that out because so many people are like, no, no, no, no, I'm just going to Midwest it or I'm going to South it, and He's say no, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that, because all you're doing is adding to the pressure cooker. This is one of my hands down, one of my favorite episodes. I just want to say it while we're live right now.