The lights came down at the WYO Theater and my mom's hand was clapping applause into mine. That's what we do, we make it work, always have alway will. Bill was on her other side, her rock. God bless his patience, love and support. I was trying not to cry. I let a few tears go anyway.
The film was Frontier State: The Story of Luke Bell — a country artist out of Cody, Wyoming. Opened for Willie Nelson. Dwight Yoakam. Hank Jr. Behind the music he was fighting bipolar disorder, and he didn't make it out. His mom, Carol Bell, sat on the panel afterward and talked about what she didn't see in time, what she wishes she'd known. The full write-up from the Cody Enterprise is here.
I wish I had done more for that event. I really do. But sitting there with my mom and Bill, after everything our family has been through — my dad's passing, my mom's stroke, the long unfair grind of CADASIL — that night didn't feel like a finish line. It felt like a fork.
How this started
A few months back I was meeting with the owner of the building where Living Room Sheridan is going in. We're partnered on the project. She introduced me to a friend of hers — Brett Noeker — a guy who is genuinely good with nonprofits. Brett works closely with At Ease.
He started looping me into more of the conversations. Asked me where I could help. I told him about the Goodyear Foundation — quietly built around my mom's story and my family's frustration trying to navigate chronic illness and mental health from the inside. He kept pulling me in deeper.
We went back and forth — me, Brett, Matson Tew (At Ease's cofounder), and Juanita — figuring out where I could actually be useful. I sat in on a mental health workshop at the college. I listened. And then we landed on the work: take ateasehorsemanship.org and rebuild it as ateasehms.org. Real site. More resources. More signal.
The build was the easy part. The harder part was sitting in those rooms.
Ask the question
The panel turned to QPR — Question, Persuade, Refer. The first one is the one that stops most people in their tracks. Actually asking the question. By name. Out loud.
My mom doesn't stop in her tracks. She worked at the VA in mental health for most of her life. She lost my dad. She has earned every word she has ever said about this work, and she said the most important thing of the entire night sitting right there next to me in the dark.
Start with the warm ones, she said. Are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you? Be there. Don't leave the room. Don't change the subject. Don't make yourself the focus. Then ask the question most people are afraid to ask:
Are you having thoughts of suicide? Do you have a plan?
She told me asking about a plan is the part that shakes everything loose. Saying it out loud, out of someone else's mouth, makes it real — and the second it becomes real, it starts to lose some of its power. The thought comes out of the dark and into the room. It's physically disarming. It's mentally disarming. It's emotionally disarming. It changes the shape of the whole moment.
And if there is something within reach that worries you, she said, ask gently if you can hold onto it while the two of you talk. Set it aside. Just for now. Don't make it a fight, make it a pause. Bring the temperature down. Give the conversation air to breathe in.
That is the part most people don't know how to do. She does. She told me, plain as day, in a dark theater while a documentary about a young man who didn't make it played on the screen behind us. I'm writing it here because if you ever need this language, you should have it before you need it.
The asking is the work. Saying it out loud is what makes it real — and the second it's real, it starts to lose some of its power.
What I keep noticing in those rooms
Everybody at these events is talking about crisis. As they should — the people in those rooms are the ones running toward the fire. They are saving lives. Real lives. My respect for that work is endless.
But I keep noticing something else. I keep seeing myself sitting many points away from crisis, in a good way. Not because I don't have my stuff — I do. Everyone does. But because somewhere along the way, I found the kind of fellowship that quietly keeps you off the edge in the first place.
That's the thesis I can't let go of: helping people find fellowship and friendship well before the crisis. Not as a replacement for crisis work — alongside it. Upstream of it. The hand on your shoulder before you ever needed one there.
It's not what happens to you. It's what happens for you.
What we built before, and what we're building now
When I had Local Nakamal, people would come in just to take the edge off. Sit with friends. Play pool. Shoot some darts. Catch an event. They didn't know they were in a place subconsciously and intentionally designed for camaraderie. That was the entire point.
I'm doing it again. Better location. Near downtown Sheridan. In a town that needs it. Most of the time there won't be alcohol on the menu — and that's not even the headline. The headline is community.
The underlying tone: every employee will be QPR trained. If they ever feel the need, they'll ask somebody how they're doing. And they'll mean it when they ask.
We open the doors May 19th with a brand out of LA called The Props. After that, we expand. We grow. We keep building.
Where the night actually ended
After the panel, after the questions and the silence and the tears that didn't fully dry, I needed... na i wanted to take the edge off. Felt like a for the plot moment. I don't drink much. But I have a signature drink for the rare occasion that I do. I call it The Columban — equal parts Hennessey, Kahlua, Amaretto. Slow. Dark. Sweet. I pulled in at the No Name Bar.
The bartender saw me walk in. "Hey Dalton, you need a water?" I let out a laugh.
Like most bartenders around here, they know me. They know I don't drink much. They know if I am drinking, it's my go to and some introspective conversations. Not many people know I have a signature drink, but that's what makes it one. And without realizing it, she had just done the thing — a small, gentle check-in dressed up as a hospitality reflex. That little moment is the entire game in miniature. That is what it looks like when a place is built right.
I sat down with The Columbian and got pulled into a conversation with the guy on the stool next to me. He had been through it. The real kind of "been through it." The kind that doesn't really fit in a conversation, but you let it spill out anyway because there's nothing else to do with it. Somebody had tried to murder him once. He had the scars to show me. He told me the story in pieces — the way people tell stories like that, in pieces — and I listened.
We started looking for silver linings together. To his credit, the man could find a few. He had reasons. He was still here. He was still telling the story. That counts.
That was the actual cap on the night. The film. The panel. My mom's voice in the dark. The bartender's quiet check-in. A stranger at a bar showing me his scars and his silver linings in the same breath. Four different versions of the same lesson, stacked one on top of the other.
Different stories, all of them. Same one rule underneath all of it: we don't make it out of this alive. So make it count while you can. And while you're here, sit next to somebody. Listen.
What my mom keeps teaching me
My mom is the strongest person I know. After my dad died — heavy, the kind of heavy you don't fully unpack in a lifetime — she kept going. Through CADASIL. Through the stroke. Through everything that came after.
Strokes are debilitating in a way that's hard to describe to someone who hasn't watched one. It's unbearable. It's unfair. And she still has spunk. She still fights. She still hands out the kind of wisdom that drops a room. God bless that woman.
She is the one who taught me — by not saying it, by just doing it — that it's not what happens to you. It's what happens for you.
I want to check in on her more.
The unrealistic goal
A while back I set myself a goal. The rule was simple: it had to be unrealistic, unattainable, and unmeasurable. Something I could only ever work toward, never check off.
The goal I set was to end suicide.
I know how that sounds. I'm not naive about it. Everyone I meet is playing a different hand of cards, and the pain behind a person's worst day is real. I'm not minimizing any of it.
But here's the thing I keep coming back to. We all share exactly one thing — we don't make it out of this game alive. The worst-case scenario is already guaranteed. So why take any day for granted? Why give up early?
You're telling me the worst-case scenario is something that's already guaranteed? The one rule is I can't punch my own clock out of here.
It leaves too many people behind in too much pain. There is more left to live, even on the days that don't feel like it.
And it isn't just the extreme end of this. It's the loneliness in the long quiet middle. The mental struggle that doesn't have a name yet. The slow erosion of someone going through something nobody around them sees. There is too much AI in our lives right now and not enough of each other. We have to be there for one another. We have to lift each other up. We have to ask the question.
The story, as it unfolds
I'm writing this now because it's still early. My piece in the At Ease puzzle is a little different — I'm a digital consultant for them, of sorts. But I'm also impacted by this topic at the bone.
What Matson, Brett, Juanita, and the whole At Ease team are doing is real, and it's saving lives. What Wyoming PBS just did with the Luke Bell film is real. What Carol Bell has chosen to do with her loss — open a wound out loud so other families recognize the signs sooner — is a kind of courage I don't have words for.
I'm going to keep telling this story as it unfolds. The Living Room opens this month. The Goodyear Foundation keeps building rails for organizations like At Ease. The work doesn't stop.
If you're a veteran, a first responder, or anyone caught in the long quiet middle of a hard season — At Ease is for you. ateasehms.org. Use it. Share it. Tell someone.
And if you're closer to the edge than you'd like to admit — call somebody. Walk into a room with people in it. Sit next to a stranger if that's all you've got. Don't punch the clock. There is more left to live than you can see from where you're standing.
— Dalton
