In this live‑stream, Brooke Cheney, owner of A Great Start Shooting School in Harwinton, Connecticut, hosts a spontaneous “Suicide Prevention Saturday” session that aired on a Sunday after she missed the original Saturday broadcast. She opens by acknowledging the day’s mishap, then explains her mission: because two‑thirds of gun deaths are suicides, focusing on suicide prevention can save many lives. Brooke shares a series of personal stories—her 19‑year‑old knee injury that ended an Olympic ski hopeful, a sudden tuition shortfall that forced her into community college, and how those setbacks led her to meet her husband and build a family. She uses these anecdotes to illustrate how painful events can become catalysts for growth when met with grace, self‑compassion, and faith. Central to her message is a mental‑health technique: replace the unproductive question “why did this happen?” with “what can I learn from this?” to reframe adversity. She emphasizes giving oneself permission to rest, not marrying one’s plans, and trusting a higher purpose, while acknowledging that faith is a personal lens that not everyone shares. Throughout, she interacts with viewers (Mike, Donna), encourages them to like, subscribe, and support the channel, and invites the audience to consider how to start each day positively. The livestream blends motivational storytelling, practical coping strategies, and a call to action for suicide‑prevention awareness.
Chapters
Oh, perfect. Of course, just as I go live, I realize I have not silenced my phone. Okay, let's see. Is that better? Yes. All right. Hey everyone. Um, for some reason I feel like I'm always whispering when I first start because I'm like, wait, what am I doing? Unsure. Yes, that's how lots of us start our lives or continue our lives or all of that. So it's Sunday. It is not Saturday. Yesterday was Saturday. I was not here on Suicide Prevention Saturday because I got laid up in my bed. Well, actually in my chair. I have arthritis in my back and sometimes I can't move. So Suicide Prevention Saturday on a Sunday because life does not always go according to plan. Hey Mike, how are you? Of course, yours is the first face I see pop up. I know. So, yeah, so I actually saw Mike yesterday. I'm like, oh, I'll see you tonight. And God had other plans for me. So one of my favorite sayings is you make plans just to make God laugh, because what's going to happen is never promised. You don't know. You can make plans. And actually, one of the keys to happiness is don't get married to your plans. Have some grace in stuff, you know, kind of doing what it's gonna do. That being said, I think it was really, really late and really, really dark when I realized I had missed Suicide Prevention Saturday. I'm like, okay, do I try to make it down here to my office so I can do Facebook and YouTube at the same time, or no? So the correct answer for me yesterday was no. And believe it or not, that is one of those things that actually is super important for your mental health. Give yourself grace when you need grace. Allow yourself to take care of you first, because if you're not taking care of you first, you can't help take care of anyone else. And most of us do like taking care of others. So if this is your first time checking in, my name is Brooke Cheney and I own a shooting school in Harwin, Connecticut called A Great Start Shooting School. I do Suicide Prevention Saturday because every 2 out of 3 gun deaths you hear about in the media are suicides. So if we are looking to save lives, if 60% of the problem is suicides, then imagine how many lives we could save if we actually paid attention to suicide prevention and mental health. All right, so that's my why. I am back to doing this on Facebook and YouTube, so they are in both places, mainly because on YouTube, if you want to see past episodes, it's way easier. You just go to the, um, watch list. So let's talk about bad things that lead to good lessons. So everybody's got challenges. Your challenge and my challenge are going to be different. How we deal with them also going to be different. So I have lots of stories in my life where something seemed like it was really bad at the time. It seemed really bad. So imagine a 19-year-old getting ready to attempt to qualify for the freestyle Olympics team, 1989 to 1990. Her father gets her all set up. She's got a place to stay. She's got a job to work while she's training, does her— is taking her routine, working on it. The week before Christmas blows out her knee. This was her shot at trying to get into the Olympics for that year, something she'd been skiing since she was 3 years old. And, you know, this was the thing she wanted to do. Well, that person is me, right? So here I am, blown knee, lost my shot at the Olympics, or at least trying out for the Olympics. I was not a happy camper on crutches at Christmas that year. I still had a job, I still had a condo I had to pay for, and no shot of the Olympics. So I was less than happy because I'm missing out on this chance of a lifetime. Now, 19 years old, 18, 19, and I'm mad and I'm angry, but there's good news because I did get into my first choice college because I deferred for a year because I was going to go for the Olympics and see what happened. So I get my college letters saying sign up for your classes, pick out your roommate, all of that. I do all that, pick out my classes, pick out my roommate. August comes, I get my letter saying, okay, final tuition bill is due. I send that to my dad. Dad says, oh, I'm sorry, honey, you can't afford to go there. We're not going there. Now, funny thing My father had just bought a truck that happened to cost the same amount as my college tuition that year. So I was already mad and angry because I missed my chance at the Olympics. I then got more mad and angry because I didn't get to go to my first choice college. And here it is, August, and college is about to start. So what do I have to do? I go to community college here in Torrington, Connecticut, because even though I didn't have time to go through accepting, I could at least go to class and get some credits and apply to the college the following year or the following semester. So all of these things, all of my anger, frustration— I can't believe that my dad did this to me, I can't believe I blew out my knee— all of these things are making me super angry. Hello, Miss Donna, I hope you are healing well from your car accident. Ma'am. So, um, I'm super mad, super angry. Well, guess what? Those things that made me super angry and mad are the things that have me right here talking to you. Because if those horrible things that made me super mad and angry didn't happen, if I got to the Olympics, I would have not met my husband. If I had gone to my college of choice, I would not have met my husband. And yesterday, our 22nd wedding anniversary, we have 2 kids, 14 and 15, and we're very happily married. So those are examples of things that can be really horrible at the time, but you can get a good lesson out of it, or you can remember that there is another purpose. Because like I said at the beginning of this thing, Suicide Prevention Saturday on a Sunday, because we make plans and God laughs. So understanding that sometimes when you're in it, it totally sucks. If you went back in time and told my 18 or 19-year-old self, it's okay, you're act— all these failures are setting you up for a much better success in what you had planned. And it's very hard to have that faith from time to time. Now, if you're one of these people who have no faith, I'm sorry, I got nothing for you. I don't know how to live without faith, so, um, it makes it harder. But it's like you're still going to learn something even if you don't have like, oh, there's someone guiding my path. But if you allow yourself to have the opportunity that something that really sucks is really there to give you a life lesson that's going to make life better for you going forward. I talk to lots of people because sometimes we talk about like sexual abuse and that sort of thing, and it's one of those things just like suicide prevention. Once you talk about it and people like, ooh, me too, it's like anything that's hard, anything that was a difficulty in your life the darker it gets, the brighter the light is at the other end of the tunnel. In that, if the worst thing that can happen to you, or that has ever happened to you, is you got whole milk in your skim milk latte, that's your level of disappointment. Now, don't know how it is for you because it's not my skim milk versus my almond milk or whatever, but the idea is that When bad things happen, it allows us to grow and understand and deal with stuff. And if those bad things hadn't happened to me, I wouldn't be able to be here to try to help you think about how to look at crappy stuff that happens in a positive light. Like Donna here, who is online on Facebook with us right now, her and her husband just got in a crazy car accident. And I know she's super happy, not that they got in the car accident, but they're still alive because the car was really wrecked, right? So could she be pissed off about the fact she's got to get a new car? Mm-hmm. Could she be mad because she went to the hospital and so did the farmer and all of that? She could be, but Donna's not that kind of girl. She's super happy because she knows she's got another day. And no day is promised in this world. So when bad things happen, it's okay to be mad, frustrated, pissed off. Just don't stay there. That's the problem. And when I was a teenager, I'm gonna say I stayed there for quite some time. So as a non-teenager, um, just remember to let go. Acknowledge the problem. Even give yourself grace to ask the question, what is this going to teach me? Or what can I learn from this? Because as we've discussed in other videos, the what versus why— don't ask why. Never ask why. Why is a bad question, because when you say, why did this happen? You're setting yourself up for your brain to say, well, because you suck, or because you're stupid, or any of that. But when you ask the what questions— what can I learn from this? What is this here to teach me?— when we put better words into our thought process, because who you talk to the most— this was last week too— in here, we talk to ourselves the most. Always. We're constantly having conversations in here. So make sure you're asking, what are the possibilities? What can I do? How can I make this better? That sort of stuff. So, um, bad things turning into good lessons. That was the plan for today. So sometimes I have a plan. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate you for checking in on my Suicide Prevention Saturday on a Sunday because life does not go according to plan. And next week, which is already next month, Hmm, I think next week's might be on Friday. Uh, we're taking the kids to a comedy show at Foxwoods, and I don't remember what time it is. It might be on Friday, it might be on Saturday, who knows. Maybe we'll do bonus Suicide Prevention Saturdays for the beginning of September. Um, don't know. So anyway, I will see what's happening. All right, again, thank you all for checking in. By all means, like the video, all that fun stuff. If you're watching on YouTube instead, please subscribe. I am trying to get get a custom YouTube channel, so that would be helpful. And I need subscribers in order to be able to do that. All right, I think that's everything. Y'all have a great rest of your weekend. Tomorrow is Monday. For me, it's my day off. For most of y'all, you got to get to go to work. So before you go to bed tonight, say, how can I wake up and have the best day possible? Give it a try. You never know, it could work. I gotta figure out how to turn this off. All right, YouTube first. Oh wait, I can't type. And then Facebook.
