301: What if you were pulled into the abyss?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Calling out for help, both physically and I think spiritually, your spirit is calling out, help, I need you now. And to not feel any sort of response, it was almost as if the ocean stopped talking to me.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 301. What if you were pulled into the abyss?

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I always kind of cherished being named after my father. I am one of five siblings. I'm the second oldest and I have an older brother and a younger brother and then two younger sisters. We had a really good relationship, especially with the older brothers.

My mom and dad were always loving parents. My father worked two jobs and taught us, you know, us kids growing up, you know, the importance of work and the importance of earning your own way. He wasn't that kind of hands-on, kind of, I love you, father. But my mother was quite the opposite, so it seemed like it was a pretty good balance between the two of them.

My mother never missed a football game, never missed a forensics event. We were just very, very close as a mother and son. I suppose in some ways I was a real kind of mama's boy, if you will. And that relationship was always very important to me. A really good part of my childhood was that closeness that I could always count on my mom to be there, both in the successes and the losses.

We grew up in Wisconsin. Even after I was grown and married, I stayed in the area. We were a very close family all throughout growing up and even into adulthood. I was a very free-spirited, fearless, kind of adventurous child.

The elementary school that I went to in first grade was quite a bit bigger, but it had this wide open prairie behind. And there were birds that would nest in the prairie and we were told to stay away from them. But kind of natural curiosity that I had about nature and how things work led me to go chase after these birds and discover their nests so I could see the eggs. And, you know, kind of being adventurous about

It wasn't that I was a major rule breaker. My mom kept me in line too much for that. But if you told me where the line was, I would put a little toe on the line to see if I could get away with that and push that line a little bit in the other direction. So there's kind of always this testing of the rules and can I get away with this or not?

I've always kind of been a little bit of a jokester and free-spirited person, but also very determined. Anything that I kind of set out to do, I wanted to do with absolute perfection. When I got into high school, we moved into a house right next door to my cousins, Arne and Shannon, and they became like brothers.

And then I graduated from high school, but I was still living at home. It was Halloween night. I got a call from my aunt next door asking if I had heard from Arnor Shannon. No, it's the middle of the night. So we went out looking because they hadn't come home.

And as we're driving around rural part of Wisconsin on the routes that we thought that they would have taken, we came upon a bend in the road. There was a pond off on one side of the road. Things weren't right. There was a pole that was down, a little dock that had been damaged. We could see some tire tracks kind of in the dew off the road. So it really looked like there had been a car accident.

The police came out and discovered that my cousin's car was at the bottom of this pond. The wrecker was lifting the car from the bottom of the pond, and I'll never forget that as they kind of raised it up, I saw Arne's blonde hair kind of resting on one of the windows, and it was at that moment that you just knew that they had died.

I just grabbed my aunt, looked her in the eye, and I'll never forget the utter fear that was in her eye knowing that her two sons were dead. I'll never forget the sheer kind of terror in my own mind of the finality of death. When you're 18 years old, you're immortal. We had done all these things together, and none of us had ever been hurt.

And so all of these memories just flooded your mind. And then at the same time, it was a flood of emotion that that's it. His life and your life together is over. I was filled with a real sense of my own mortality. And so that was kind of a real turning point in my adolescence journey.

And the impression that it left with me on the importance of the relationship, especially with my mother, really changed in that moment. And that's something that has stuck with me forever.

The relationship with my own brothers became more important to me. By this time, my older brother had married and the accident was happening kind of at the same time as my parents' divorce. And I wanted to be there for my younger brother. So now I'm 19. My older brother then moved away to Omaha, Nebraska. So I planned a trip. I'm going to go to Nebraska to visit my brother.

And I was staying at his house, and my sister-in-law says to me that there's this girl that her family also grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin. She told me her name, Lisa, and there's a dance over at the church tonight. And I'll never forget, I walked into the gymnasium where the dance was being held, and this beautiful girl comes walking over and says, Hi, I'm Lisa. And that was it. I was smitten.

That was August, and by November, we were married. So that's kind of the next phase in life. The early years of marriage were a challenge. I was working at grocery stores, and we always knew that we wanted something more different than that.

Lisa encouraged me to go to college. I enrolled at Winona State University, but my ultimate goal was always to go to law school. So we moved to Ohio, away from every bit of family we ever had, which was extraordinarily difficult. We had two children by that point. It was her and I and the two kids. With law school, it was kind of a blur for those three years of hard work and perseverance.

And then we ended up getting a job in Toledo, Ohio. It was the dream job for me as a lawyer. We were finally making some money where we could enjoy extra things in life. And that's when we started the first vacations to Hawaii. Growing up in Wisconsin, the main body of water that I had experienced for my whole life until I came to Hawaii was the Mississippi River, which is an impressive river, but it's a river.

I had always thought that that was just the best thing. And I love to be on the water. We would water ski, we would go to the sandbar, just hanging out on the river or some of the lakes. And then when we came to Hawaii and I got to see the ocean, it is just this crystal clear, blue, beautiful body of water. I mean, the Pacific Ocean here around Hawaii is absolutely just amazing. When we came in 1993, we

a shoestring budget, it was still a wonderful vacation with night walks on the beach and watching the moon come up over Diamond Head and just a beautiful tropical island. And so we came again then in 2000. We stayed right on the beach at Bellows and that was my favorite beach. The white sands, the sound of the ocean hitting the beach, the ocean breezes. If you could draw a picture of heaven

It would have to include bellows. The first time at bellows that we walked out of the lanai and looked out over the ocean and the waves were rolling in, I was captivated. And the sound of the ocean on the shore, it was so soothing.

I'm kind of a morning person. So in the morning, I would get up a little bit before sunrise and go out on the line, watch the sunrise up over the ocean. As soon as the sun would just be peeking over, I would just walk down on the beach. It was such a peaceful feeling that you could just unwind and let go of, you know, the stress and the concern, anything that was kind of going on in your life with your job and profession. And it's just a place of absolute peace.

When I would walk up and down the beach, it's amazing the kind of the answers and things that come into your mind. It's almost like the ocean is speaking to you and helping you to work through things that trouble your mind. Shortly after my oldest daughter had called us and told us that she was pregnant, she wasn't married and not in a real committed relationship. So there was some real question about her path forward.

And I'll never forget, I'm walking along the beach and just kind of thinking about my children and her situation came to mind pretty strongly. And the impression that I had in that moment was to just love and support. That was really the phrase that came to mind. It was almost like the ocean had spoken it to me, you know, to just love and support and be there for your daughter. I fell absolutely in love with the ocean.

And as part of that then is really what led me to want to snorkel, to not just be on the beach, but to be out in the water, see the wildlife and the ocean animals. So I really got into snorkeling and that became a main part of what we would do while we were on vacation. When you're snorkeling, it's almost like leaving this world and going into a completely different world.

What's really neat is just the different kind of fish, the different kind of coral, and to see them interact and the playful nature of the marine life. It's fun to just kind of float on the top of the water and look down and watch fish dart in and out of the coral, swim circles around each other. The longer that you sit and watch, the more things that you begin to see.

That's the other thing that the ocean represents is just a real slowing down of life. When you're in the water, there's not a lot of outside sounds. You know, you don't have the sounds of the city and you don't have the sounds of people. You hear the plankton or you can hear the whales and dolphins and, you know, some of those different marine sounds. But for the most part, it's just quiet and peaceful.

And you can just really kind of be in touch with your own self and your own thoughts. Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. It's been a busy season of events and travel, and my wardrobe has taken a beating. A total overhaul isn't in my budget, but I'm replacing some of those worn-out pieces with affordable, high-quality essentials from Quince. By partnering with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us.

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2007 was going to be a special trip because Lisa's grandmother was going to be joining us. So it was an opportunity to be with her parents and just a lot of family time. With my father-in-law, we went to play golf. When we got back to the resort after golf, I said, hey, I'm just going to go out for a little bit. And I went to put on my fin and the strap was broke.

And by the time all that happened, there was no place to go. The next morning, I desperately wanted to go snorkeling, especially since I had missed out on the day before. So I said, okay, I'm going to run into town. And I bought a new set of fins, went back to the cabin. And my family had said to me, hey, why don't you just come and be with us at the beach?

I said, no, no, no, I'm going to go up here and snorkel in this other area. I've been told that's where all the turtles are. I really want to see a turtle, but I won't be long. I headed off towards the western side of the beach, away from where everybody swims. And when I got down there, there was a sign and a fence, restricted access and couldn't be in that area without authorization.

Of course, that didn't apply to me on that day. I had given myself authorization. And then I further justified my presence there by saying, well, I'm going to be in the ocean, not on the land. I won't swim past that fence. I'll stay, you know, on this side of the fence.

I climbed down the rock and got to the sandy part of the beach, and there was only one other person even in the area, and there was this younger lady with her child, and they were just playing on the sandy part of the beach. I set off to snorkel in this area where there was turtles, and that was something that at that point I had not yet seen in the ocean, and so I really desperately wanted to see a sea turtle.

Probably a mile or so offshore, there are two little islands that are called the Mokes. And rumors were that snorkeling around these islands was exceptional. I got about 100 yards offshore and I started to see some coral and reef and rocks and other fish and marine life. I found one area and, you know, had some really beautiful yellow, just vibrant color.

The sun was out. It was perfectly clear. It was just absolutely just perfect day. For the most part, I was just motionless, floating on the top watching the fish. I had dove down to get a closer look at these fish. You know, it was only maybe 15, 16 feet deep. It wasn't really, really too deep where I was at.

In that kind of moment, there was like a little bit of an undertow on the bottom of the ocean. And then all at once, all the fish that I was watching kind of got swept. And I was like, oh man, all the fish are gone. So in that kind of split second, I turned my head to the left because I wanted to find some more rock and coral and some more fish to look at and see if I could see a turtle there.

As I turned my head to the left, it was a bit of a shadow and motion that caused me to kind of quickly turn. And as I did that, all I saw in that instant was just an open jaw and jagged teeth. If it's possible to jump in the water, I probably did. I'll never forget the flatness of the snout. It was just like looking right into the nostrils.

And by the time in my mind it registered that this is a shark, my upper body is actually lifted up out of the water and I'm looking down. It's just the gray mass of the back. And I just immediately just kind of spun as much as I could to not have contact with this animal. And I can kind of feel the tug on my leg. When it bit my leg, it wasn't like instantly painful. It was more like pain.

Someone had grabbed on and was trying to pull you down and just not letting go. And just the gray mass, it was just surreal. It was not even something that I had expected to see. I just instinctively punched it several times in the back right below the dorsal fin, two or three times. Then it was gone. I couldn't see it anymore. So I put my mask back on.

put my face in the water and it was just red. I'm a product of the 80s and Steven Spielberg's Jaws. You know, everything that I knew about sharks was, I was toast. What we saw in the movies, right, that Jaws would come back and get them. And in that instant, I started to panic. But when I set out to try and swim, I couldn't do it. My leg didn't work.

When I saw that blood and then I couldn't swim, it was very real in that moment that I wasn't going to survive this moment. It was just a matter of time before the shark came back and came up from the depths. It was going to come up from behind and get me again and drag me down and under, and that's it. I really felt that ominous sense of death. Resolving to get out of the water and trying to swim and not being able to do it

I'd put my mask back on, but it was just instantly foggy. So I could no longer see. I'd look and look to one way, and in your peripheral, I would see a shadow or a flash. And, you know, that would startle. All the while thinking, it's out there. It's coming back. Nothing really seemed to be working. I couldn't swim right. I couldn't snorkel the way I wanted to.

I couldn't get out of the ocean. I'm becoming exhausted. The surface just starting to beat me up, push me around. I'm getting rolled in the wave. Then it becomes not only the shark, but am I going to drown? I'd taken in water. A plethora of things that are going through your mind and problems you're having trying to make it out of the ocean. And then feeling so alone.

I don't even have anybody here to help. The only way this is going to happen is if I do it. And I don't know if I have the strength anymore to do it. We all think we're supermen. So we have this false sense of our own abilities, I think, sometimes. And in that moment, there was a certain level of kind of disappointment in my own self, adding to the whole feeling of loneliness. How would you get into something that you can't get out of? You're stronger than this.

But in that moment, I had just actually come to the realization that, all right, I'm in a situation where I'm not as strong as I thought. I'm not going to get out of this. This is it. You hear the stories of your life flashes before your eyes, but it wasn't as much like that as much as it was. My thoughts went right to my family and my kids. And that time my kids were still young and at home. I was heavily involved in their lives. The thoughts came into my mind that,

That's gone. That's over. I wasn't going to be there for my family. They would have to go it alone. As that kind of flashes through your mind, there's a sense of inadequacy that comes with those moments of reflection like, was I a good dad? Will they have fond memories of me? Did I do enough? Growing up, that's kind of my idea of what it meant to be a man. I'm the strong person.

I solve my own problems and fix what needs fixing. It is an attack on your sense of masculinity and self-worth to kind of realize that you're not Superman and that you do have vulnerabilities and just feel weak, just feel weak. And that wasn't a good feeling. Am I actually going to give up? Contrary to how I've lived my life, am I going to give up in this moment?

On the other side of that was the feeling of abandonment. Really, God? This is how it's going to end for me? A shark in the ocean? I kind of considered myself a man of faith. And to not have felt that spiritual support in the moment was like, what did I do to deserve that? Have I offended that sense of spirituality in some way? It was very frightening experience.

And I have never in my entire life felt so alone. Calling out for help, both physically and I think spiritually, your spirit is calling out, help, I need you now. And to not feel any sort of response, not even my mother's voice in my mind saying, yeah, Harvey, this will be okay. We'll get through this.

Even those voices that you can hear in your mind were quiet. It was almost as if the ocean stopped talking to me. There was no support external, internal, anywhere. It was just me and fear. And that was not a good place. Not a good place. Out of nowhere, in a direction that I wasn't even looking, I heard somebody yell, I'm here.

I turned my head in the direction of the sound and within about 10 yards of me, there was a gentleman, Ray is his name, who had come out to help me. I looked right at him and in my mind, I'm like, I can get to that guy. In that matter of seconds, I went from the deepest despair to being just absolutely filled with hope. Okay, I think I can get out of this.

This sudden rush of hope filled my mind. And then as that hope came in, it was this utter determination. This is not the end of me. As deep as I was in despair, I was now in a state of complete determination and elation. So I instantly changed direction and headed right for him. When I got to him, I instantly grabbed him.

He looked at me like, he said, are you okay? What happened? All I could say to him was, it got my leg. It got my leg. So he spun me around and put his arm under my arm and pulled me into him and just said in my ear, okay, we're going to get you to shore. And my whole body could just relax in that moment.

I never felt so safe in someone else's arms as I did in that moment. I was like, I'm going to live. He started to take us into shore and I was kicking with my right leg, the leg that had not been bitten. And he kept telling me, just relax, relax. I'll get you out of here. In my mind, I was, there's a shark. I'm going to kick until we're out of this water.

Finally, he said, every time you do that, a swell of blood comes up. Are you trying to kill us? Relax. Once we got to the beach, we were met by another gentleman who was a retired Army medic. He and Ray pulled me up onto the sand, and Ray sat down on my left side, so I couldn't see my leg, what was left. This other gentleman...

I could feel him doing stuff down there, putting on a tourniquet and wrapping up my leg. When I couldn't see what was going on, I said, Ray, am I going to lose my leg? He went just ghost white. We'll let the doctors deal with all that. I looked him right in the eyes and I said, Ray, you got to learn to lie better. At this point, while I was laying on the beach, all dread was gone because I knew that I was safe.

and that I was going to live. I said to Ray, I need to get word to my wife. And he looked up at his wife who was, you know, up on the upper part above the rocks. She shouted back that she's here, she knows. And as they lifted me up over the rock and put me into the paramedic, that was the first kind of glimpse that I got of Lisa. And I could see her.

standing there with her dad and it looked like she had just kind of collapsed into his arms. From the gurney I just gave her a thumbs up. It was just kind of in that moment where it switched from focus on me to focus on her. Oahu is a small island but there's a lot of traffic. The only level one trauma was on the other side of the island.

They put me in the back of the ambulance and started to drive to Honolulu. It was really kind of surprising to me that I didn't really feel any pain. I kept telling them the only thing that hurts is that stupid belt on my leg. I think the adrenaline and the joy that I had felt by being alive just masked any sort of pain that would have been there.

But when we finally got to the hospital and they started to unwrap my leg and then they started to clean it, that was the first time when I really kind of knew how bad it was. It was very, very painful, excruciatingly painful.

But then it was instantly, they were prepping for surgery. They'll do what they can to, you know, preserve your leg. Still wasn't really answering the question, what's going on with my leg? You know, is my leg there? Is my leg gone? Am I going to be less of a man now because I've lost my leg? They're getting ready to take me off to surgery. I said to the nurse and Lisa, don't let them take my leg.

Lisa said, well, I'd rather have you alive with one leg than gone. At one point, the nurse came over and asked for my wedding ring. I had this flood of emotion and thought of how much I almost lost.

The thought came to me that they could have been removing that from my dead body instead of going into surgery. I handed that to the nurse and gave it to my wife. The sense of potential loss was really quite overwhelming. When we came out of surgery, I was awake enough to see that I had my leg. I had that kind of sense of relief. The surgeon came to talk to us.

The area on my leg where I was bitten is actually the femoral artery. And the shark had not clamped down enough or bitten hard enough to sever the femoral artery. But the wound was within about an inch. And if he had nicked that artery, you generally bleed out within about 30 minutes. And chances are I would not have survived that.

When he told us that, I thought back to the moments when I'm trying to get out of the water and the feelings of ingratitude or abandonment that I had felt in that moment were all at once balanced by the gratitude that I had for the ocean and for God for having spared me.

that the ocean marine life didn't bite hard enough to cause the injury and actually take my life. The surgeon, he managed to put everything back together. There's a nerve in there called the perineal nerve, which controls your lower leg function. That had been severed, and you couldn't find both ends of that nerve, so it would be some time before I could bend and walk.

And so I would have to have an assistive device, like a rope that put around my heel and use that to pull my leg back and forth. Then the concern became more, okay, what about this? Can I do this? Can I do that? And I said to Dr. Murray, will I be able to play golf again? He said, yeah, yeah, I think you'll be able to do that. Can I play basketball with my son again?

And he said, well, that one might be a little more difficult. He didn't say no. And if you don't tell me no, then that means that it's going to happen. When I got back to Ohio, my focus really returned to what level of function can I get? The only way to make things happen was to have this other surgery and change the way my foot works.

They were able to actually take a tendon from the inside of my foot, move it around and reattach it to the top of my foot so that I could learn to walk again without an assistive device. That was called a posterior tibial tendon transfer, and that actually was kind of mind-tripping. When I was learning to walk, I would look down at my foot and have the thought to turn my toes in, and they would come up and to kind of rewire and retrain the mind.

Once I was discharged from the hospital, one of the first most really difficult things was that when I would sleep at night, the nightmares were pretty intense. Mostly reliving those moments where I didn't know where the shark was. And I was swimming, but it was like swimming in quicksand. And I just couldn't go. I couldn't go. I couldn't go. I couldn't get anywhere. That fear of, I've got to get out of here. I've got to get out of here.

That was pretty difficult to get past. This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe.

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Trying to learn to re-walk and I had some recurrence of infection which required some additional treatment. Trying to get back into a sense of my normal life physically, not being able to function in the way that we had before. Even just to get out of bed, I have to use a rope to swing my leg over the side. That kind of took a toll mentally as well.

Because active guy, physical guy, you know, once I had these limitations, the recovery was long and difficult. Trying to find my own path forward, I had a conversation with my sister about how I was feeling, what was going on. And she was like, you ever thought about running a marathon? Well, no, but if you'll do it with me, we can do it. So we started training.

The thought of running wasn't something that really ever kind of occurred to me. Talking to my sister, I'm like, yeah, I can do that. Train on your own. You run in a small group of people, but you're just doing your own thing and your own pace. It kind of became a challenge. This is going to be the point where I feel like I've recovered when I can run a race. Not going to beat anybody else, but I'm going to beat my self-doubt. And I'm going to prove to myself that I can accomplish something

like running a marathon, which my mind was completely unheard of. The support that she gave for the training was just awesome. And it gave me purpose. It really resonated beyond just my one sister. And then it morphed into with my other sister before I know it, all three of us are running together. And

bonding and it was a opportunity in my life where people cared about me enough to give hope and guidance to do things that I didn't really think I could accomplish on my own. And I ran two marathons. I think that had a lot to do with my recovery and regaining that sense of who I am, albeit different, but gave me that idea that, you know what, I'm not defeated by this.

When you start to look at life and what's important, there are certain relationships that just withstand everything. Certain people that step up to pull you out of your pity party or help you to realize what priorities are important.

When I think about the relationship with my wife, again, that certain sense of masculinity and I'm this strong man and I can do it all. In that moment of feeling weak and vulnerable, she helped me realize it didn't always matter to her whether I was this big, strong man, that it was okay if I had a vulnerability or if I lost my leg, it wouldn't matter.

That wasn't important to her. What was important to her was me as a person. I never let the dreams and the fear bother me. You know, on our subsequent visits to Hawaii, we stayed at the very beach where this happened. And I stood at the edge of the water and I just said, I'm just going in.

And I just ran in, dove into the first wave, stood there for a minute, and then ran out like a big chicken. But I did it. I think it was part of the way to overcome dread of being in the ocean and the dread of what's out there. I really learned since this accident about the ocean life.

It would have been super easy and maybe even expected after an attack like this that I'm not going to go in the ocean again. It's a scary place. But after I was bitten, one of the things that I set out to do was just understand more about the ocean and about sharks, their behavior. And I love the ocean and it loves me back. And I needed to understand more about that interaction. And so I really started to learn a lot more about sharks.

Really, they are just fascinating animals. So much so that the 10-year anniversary of the shark attack, I actually took an opportunity to go on an open ocean, no cage, shark swim dive out of Haleiwa on Oahu. That is the most majestic experience I have ever had to, in some ways, face that fear of being in the ocean with a shark.

but also the culmination of what I had studied and learned about and tried to be more respectful of the ocean and marine life and that environment and knowing that it's their place and we're visitors. I'll never forget, we went out on this tour and they have a safety swimmer that goes in the water first and then he lets you know when it's safe to come in

In the water, you can see the sharks before you dive in. And just in that moment was like, I'm going to do this. By the time I swam out to the safety swimmer, the peaceful feeling of the ocean had returned. And that seemed so ironic considering the last time I encountered a shark in the ocean, the ocean was just fearful. And this was just the opposite.

They had kind of told us safety things. Don't reach out. Don't swim away. The shark will come towards you. They're curious, but then they're going to turn to show you how big they are. They're not going to attack you. I was like, okay, I'm going to trust. The shark is coming at me, coming at me, coming at me. And I'm like, any minute now, I need you to turn because that's kind of close.

All at once it did just what they said it was going to do. And it was just an amazing experience to be face to face, looking a shark in the eye and then have it turn and swim with you. You know, it was absolutely incredible. Growing up, my dad was not the first person to say I love you or I'm proud of you or give you a hug. That never felt like he didn't love us. That was just dad's way.

Well, after the shark attack, I didn't want anybody to ever say, well, that was just Harvey's way. That was just our dad's way. I wanted there to be no doubt ever on how important people were in my life, particularly my wife and children. I wanted to be sure that they always know they are really the reason that I think I fought so hard to get out of the ocean to survive. It was my thoughts had turned to them.

I learned to say, I love you more. I learned to say, I'm proud of you more. And part of why I no longer practice law, you know, I came to the realization that it really was taking away from precious time. We often think about masculinity is pretty lonely job sometimes, but it doesn't have to be. Can't we be men and masculine and still desire those relationships that bring us peace and happiness?

And I think in my own mind, I've really redefined what it means to be a man. You can be a man and be emotional and need that love and support. And you can be a man to ask for it when you need it. In 2014,

I was in this period of reflection and was kind of trying to do some different things career-wise. I sat down with my mom and I said, Mom, I'm really afraid. It's a big thing to change careers after 15 years. You know, I'm a 30-something-year-old man, afraid. And she said, just run with it. That was kind of a vulnerable point in my life where you, again, think, you know, I can figure this out on my own.

But reaching out and just knowing that my mother was there to say, "You got this." Lisa and I began vacationing to Hawaii with some frequency and fell more and more in love with Hawaii and the culture, the islands, just the atmosphere and feeling that is associated with this place.

Each time we came, there was something new that we just fell in love with. It seemed like the trauma of the attack and the near-death experience gave way to feelings of joy and connectedness to the land and the people. So one day we were waiting for our flight to go home, and we're both kind of teary-eyed and upset. And Lisa just looked at me and she said, you know, if we're this upset, maybe we're not going home.

Maybe we're leaving home. And I just said to her, well, we can't ever move here. That, you know, that's a huge life change. Basically what she said to me, and it just kind of resonated back to what my mom had said, that, listen, we can make it work. Within about three years, we moved here. So that period of vulnerability where you think that, you know, you have to be the man with all the answers and, you know, the solution and how it's going to work, just kind of showing that vulnerability with these two amazing women in my life.

really taught me a lot about it's okay to be vulnerable and it's okay to not have the immediate answer but to work through it. My relationship with God changed that day in ways that sometimes I feel inadequate to describe. In that moment of deep despair when I heard that I'm here and changed my direction and my focus,

As I have reflected on that, it really is indicative of where I was in my relationship with not just my family, but with my Maker. And that is that I'm off in this direction, and it really wasn't probably the right direction. Just like Ray said, "I'm here," there were others around me, you know, my sisters, my wife, they're saying, "I'm here, my God, I'm here."

So in those moments when I don't have peace or I feel despair or loneliness in life, it's not a matter of trying to fix it myself, but to look in a direction to where I can find that love and support. I just needed to refocus, switch from what I thought was my ultimate goal and the direction I needed to go and turn. And there's this other path that is filled with happiness and peace. I just need to swim that way, if you will.

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She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reid was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.